Light is time thinking about itself. — Octavio Paz

Here darkness in its proper region
         is brought at last to answer what
light asks of it, the only question
         which counts: has time betrayed you yet?

Outside, it is full midsummer;
         but here the numbers flee across
banked screens and passionlessly shimmer
         like sidewalks under linden trees.

You try not to be here, but elsewhere:
         the sigma-shaped triclinium
of Hadrian’s banquets at Tibur,
         splashed with squid ink, and more to come.

Later, you will pass a gallon,
         more or less, of latex enamel,
as blooms of cramp go on and on;
         but now, pitched at a martyr’s angle,

naked but still wearing your watch,
         you see the barium blackly move
through trefoil ciliated arch
         of splenic or hepatic curve.

You are become this much of light:
         no use to grieve or to deny.
What shakes you is the appetite
         for life in its complacency,

while, figured on the Axminster,
         are roses, mouths, pyloruses.
Life is so common—but not your
         life. And they are so ravenous.