Sharon Ann Jaeger

The Death of Stéphane Mallarmé

	When the skyscreen goes dark, the cloud comes hovering,
	it is a fiction of imagining:

	it never speaks, though all hearts strain
	attuned to it attentively

	and the column of fire, flash in the night--
	what will not be quenched remains unquiet,

	quicksilver-driven from dawn to dawn
	the fluid horizon of desire.

	Inscribed in the bone, particulate sphere
	the cloud claims its own:

	dust drawn to dust, erasure of flesh,
	the horror. And all in the end is undone:

	more time no more, no one, no promises--
	pillar of cloud, pillar of fire.