Taut wires bend inward, drafting a new law.
The bull’s small skull becomes a muted judge.
A white sun overrules the soft command—
the year changes its skin.
Letters bloom, then bruise the holiday dark.
Coded smoke glows, accused of being born;
the capitals stand up, then lose their ground.
Celebration pins its badge on the wound.
No midnight clears the bargain in the light.
A court of gold dissolves in acrid dust;
It stands—half portrait, half refused confession—
The cane casts off its name and turns to spell,
a staff that remembers insect-thin wars,
a lacquered lightning tethered to the palm.
Red stockings burn against the ballroom hush,
the blood stayed loyal to the painted stage
while everything else learned to play polite.
And from the window’s glare a hawk drops in—
black punctuation, sudden and precise—
to edit air with knives of beating wing.
Below, that small, awkward thing waits alone,
a joke so old the room forgets its laugh:
that little god of plague, dressed as a bird;
one masked idea, still doomed not to die.