everything was bathed in yellow,
surrounded in fleetness and subtlety
like the hidden skin of a butterfly,
secret smoke and strange air in these
cavernous eclipsed rooms.

the war of landscape extended inside
as proof, poignant and wistful, of
the stasis of vacillating punishment.

we could barely see the war, imminent
calamity setting a course in silence,
our mutability confounding.