Evening

In the salon two claws tear the silk.

Evening steps blind over a game of chess

that a brusque wind scatters, like the flick of a golden cape.

The wax figures, the diorama

of the past, not the image, is the carnage

of memory. I lock,

before a sky stunned by the dry wing beats of eagles,

the bronze deadbolts of night.

And outside, the illusory external empire

shakes torches to conjure the stars.