The evening settles after a flagrant sunset, which leaves a lingering contusion of lilac and salmon, slowly cooling cobalt and fading to darkness. The room in which I write is almost dark and I light the lamp on my desk. The green shade makes a great turnip jewel. The green light making the room mysterious in the corners, an oval secret cave, smudged dim. Shelves of books their spines dimly lit, lay hidden in the dark corners.

It has been a long time in coming to dusk and the lamp makes it in a moment a finality. Through the window the light died with a passionate slowness absorbed by the intense darkness, colours going first until an arrested, stilly poised moon held, a bright empty clarity that illuminates the trees abstractions in the moonlight. I look into the dark darkening trees and wonder what it feels like to go to sleep in them like a bird. Then the night swallows the trees and the green lamp now holds the world in its hue.

I cease writing and move outside where the quiet lays over the land in soft quiltings of hush where cloudy sounds diffusely drift. Far from me a train hoots echoing into stillness and a dog barks. In the far distance another dog faintly puts up a response, parenthetic howls within which silence attains the purest cadence.

Looking up, far, far above the stars, up through an immensity of the heavens, up to the stars in the furthest reaches, pinpoints, solitaires of dying suns. The world wheels steadily. The stars seem to drop down to earth, without growing larger, they seem to plummet down into my watching eyes, or else my mind is drawn out and up into those stellar heights, which marks the simple axis of the world. I suddenly felt very close to it all, still centred, hub held. In the slow spin of my thoughts, it is like a dream, with a dream’s unfolding inevitable progress as my eyes explore the immensity of the night.