Cold constellations Pale, leering and eerie In their streaming vault of ichor Green, loathsome, now growing too close to be denied Wrenched through the canvas Not the maw of winter Howling its sharp dismal terror Tossed, blown like leaves before a cosmic gale The pass, place of ill omen Girded in obscure tongues Gather your ashen cloak Weaver of mortal thread We, the oblation upon your slope In blood beneath the starlight Nine throats that whisper as one Arrayed here upon you in caskets of ice None shall thaw Some pages once written can never be erased Some words once spoken can never be unsaid Some blood once spilled can never be cleaned, never made whole Some doors once open can never be closed again Just before dawn Arcturus winks ruddily from above the cemetery on the low hillock And Coma Berenices shimmers weirdly afar off in the mysterious east But still the Pole Star leers down from the same place in the black vault Winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message Yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey Sometimes, when it is cloudy, I can sleep