All night the static pops and rumors to itself,

a half-pronounced, acclamatory babble,

commerce, conscience, eavesdropping on fate

or furious nothing, the wires of nations crossed.

Turn the dial, the stations spin like cooling stars,

the moon gone down. The mind

uncloses stickily from the hilts of dream,

the signal ghosting, jamming

a bloodied clutch of crowns, leaf-clashed,

coin-profiles chinking a child's singsong,

the one pure silence staring

like a hacked man's throat into the blade.