And so we might proceed: from room to room,
perfumed in shadow, as with mint and anise,
with a black rose of ice immured in our teeth,
gloved like the light an amber flask exhumes.
In place of a face, the black rose aforesaid,
and the wing of the snow angel on the tapestry would seethe
where we, like gamepieces in a round of Pachisi,
would live with aromas of gunpowder and lead.
Such regard we would show for the chambers of the air
that the light raining down upon us would dare
to douse with blood a stone of lucid glass;
The whiteness would absorb us as we ask
after the dead, with a shot hushed through damask
or a black dagger in the echoes as I pass.