When I awoke, I beheld a symbol:

the night before, You channeled a whisper

from antiquity: some Roman trickster

slowly warmed his gladius over fire

then pointed north to Lucifer, his muse,

reversed the ancient order of the stars

turning his heel toward Saturn. Yet the stars

like sand had scattered beneath the symbol

before its perfect imprint formed the muse:

and there, in its symmetry, Your whisper

poured freely through a vestibule of fire.

And when I awoke, I knew the trickster

planted the images here; the trickster

caressed his gladius under the stars

and pressed his buckler inward to the fire.

Now I fully apprehend the symbol:

the burning mouth, its half-repeated whisper,

the sandal planted in the earth, a muse

scorching the hairs on our necks; the muse

singing antiquity with the trickster

reduced to broken embers, a whisper

now imbued with the blue ashes of stars.

I know it was You who loosed the symbol,

broke the axis as kindling to a fire

crushed Lucifer and therefore bore the fire

then cupped the light within Your palms– a muse

unto Yourself– who wrung the symbol

from the vestal heart, and turned the trickster

from his proving grounds. Now the twilight stars

align, Venus at the fore, a whisper

born of a sleeping Roman: a whisper

which rose behind the dancing veil of fire,

his crucible the song of evening stars.

You pointed north to Lucifer, our muse,

limned the constellations of the trickster

and charted the path of every symbol:

His cold sword: the symbol of a whisper;

The trickster’s hearth: vicissitudes of fire;

Our muse, his burning heel above the stars