If you lend ear to idle tales about Hesperus and Phospherus
they while away the oddest hours speak
with each other in a firkin patois
and keep books of cultish import.
Being thus apprised we sight our objects
thermidor revolutionaries sprawled across the chart table
pitch mustard firmament
overhead receptive as a cellar hatch.
The Fantin-Latour rattles there in the frame
and I pull from your arm a shard of glass
a bauble fragment or the blade of citrus knife
and begin to mark the azimuth.