Camille Flammarion, L'Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888). Colorized by Heikenwaelder Hugo. Courtesy of Heikenwaelder Hugo/Wikimedia Commons.
I stood in a room that contained every moment—
it contained Tranströmer, insects, and charcoal
drawings, pocket watches, minarets surrounded by stars,
dusty tomes, moss-damp boulders, a mascara
wand, and the fragment of a map to a secret
memory I was supposed to mine. I took a step
into the dizzy litany of all that’s been lost, letting loose
a howl so loud that birds fell in feathered hail and the clouds
recoiled, carving out a cathedral from clamor. The walls
vibrated into a hymn till they were filled with hieroglyphs
of all our histories, lavish as galaxies and topiary gardens, gilded
mirrors, and Rococo paintings of cotton-candy clad women.
Amid a present plainness cut out of time-space shimmer, I stand
stripped of all trimmings. A new almanac and its moonlight layer the world
in silver foil, and the ocean’s green force rises up through the floor.