As if the air. The mid-day air.

"Panic in the face of the moon--round effendi
Or the phospored sleep in which he walks abroad
Or the majolica dish heaped up with phospored fruit
That he sends ahead, out of the goodness of his heart,
To anyone that comes--panic, because
The moon is no longer these or anything
And nothing is left but comic ugliness
Or a lustred nothingness. Effendi, he
That has lost the folly of the moon becomes
The prince of the proverbs of pure poverty. [...]

Here in the west indifferent crickets chant
Through our indifferent crises. Yet we require
Another chant, an incantation [...]

Truth's favors sonorously exhibited."


-Wallace Stevens, "Esthetique du Mal"