Now pile their absent blackness on
Your shocked,
Unbalanced eyes, bringing to bear
     Against your consciousness
           And care,
And breath, and all they would concoct,
    Cosmic oblivion,
Encircling and directionless,

So that, when going back indoors,
          You find
The rooms, the foursquare furnishings,
    The long familiar use
             Of things
Estranged. The spoons are undermined.
    The cupboards and the drawers,
Straightforward once, are now abstruse.

This standard lamp, that kettle – how
           Bizarre
That all the turning aeons, which
    Have wound up physics to
           Enrich
The rudiments of a dead star,
    Should set down here and now
These abstract engines to construe.

The tainted mirror has forsworn
           The wall;
And from the mantelpiece the clock
    In its glass dome is loud
            With shock
Each gilded second to instal
    Another second born
Beyond the Magellanic Cloud.