Your star’s fixed firm in subtle skies
over the orderly Registan, square
in its maidan; mosque and madrassa ripple
their domes under a cut moon.
Out in the shelter of midnight’s observatory,
your sextant, embedded supple in marble,
measures the sharp shaft from its arc
into the niched matrix of night,
Ulugh Beg.
You pin it down with the gazer’s art,
but decline the empire left to your care,
the son shut out, his fate inclined
to your Hajj and the hunt. And you still
commune
with those points in space the Zij-i
Sultani
captures. A blood-gout will garble
what’s left when their sparkle is dark,
faint
on the page. Your last dawn’s in flight,
Ulugh Beg,
as you fall slant between column and table
of that caught heaven you scribe. Now blink
its blaze from the end of your irritant day,
for no armillary sphere will enable
your sure ascension from life at the brink
as your sun rushes away, away.
No comments:
Post a Comment