11. It was a perfectly clear night over the lake. Perfect sight for sky. The grey-ish smudge began, a little dirty slowness. 21:30. Soon, but not that soon, because this was, as always, boring in its stateliness, the curved shadow, brownish, seeped, tidal, arching from the bottom of the moon. At about one half, you, seeing the red edge (light-red, coral, yet translucent) spread, the coral-reddish color thickening, could call it bloody. The moon became heavy— no dime-thin silver disk, this!— it was green, solid, globular, clear. Hanging, fully spherical, there. Thus was, and is. Will be.
| 115
Past midnight, logy, dropping off suddenly, I didn’t see the waxing lunar shore. It was enough to prove one axiom of sidereal time. I could not take many more. February 2007-July 2010
Notes to Draft 103: Punctum. The concept of the “punctum” derives from Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida; the epigraph is from p. 96. Gray’s “Elegy” lies somewhere behind the generation of this poem. The prose of section 1, with thanks to Erín Moure. The citation beginning “The reader will find…” is from student Donovan Tann. “The living hand” is, of course, Keats. The eclipse occurred in early 2007, over Lake Como. This draft is on the “line of eight.”