Card VII. Chariot

Without waiting for the sun’s action, floating canopies splinter into furnaces—
Elongating slivers of sky formerly admitting starlight, announcing a few overthrown
Spears and their purpose-drawn slots in the ground—where an iron habit forces silver-bearing
Veins. Since this foray into surface mining, the silver leaf has become tarnished.
When the negative reached a desired intensity, the industry increases for horsemen's armor
At whose touch, the room once filled with lights, whose fading kept us guessing for years

Much like a ghost of a smile past high walls of the studio and garden unaware, the years—
Jabbed spurs into a common flesh. Was it first a merchant’s affection for silver gauze? Furnaces

Of sores, their crescent margin to full then by half—this silver pierces bacterial armor.
Now celestial wool shapes the catastrophic shared among living things—overthrowing
Acceptable measures in the wastewater, killing commensals—the descendants left to tarnish.
With the result that noble proportions sought being dirtied, not with a silver-bearing

Surface dirt.  Now our unique portions of dust and ashes—and attendant silver-bearing
Microbes—clog heat sinks on our processors. Even caked with debris from all these years,
How much less amounted to the conscience?  Weights of protruding volumes and tarnished
Antiquity, immolated shards, stirrup leather, offered up like unknown corpses to the furnace—
Protected from theft, the degradation of a candle-end or laser; here the few overthrown
Skeletons and buried secrets suffer less—All for a mining operation. The moon’s armor

Provides evidence enough of that. The caliper is removed, and distance read of the moon—

Tremblingly past highlands and magma ocean; or minute lengthening of the days, our silver
Bearing tracks—or on occasions, when the disc flashes back the ground’s tint—overthrow
The notion that rider and satellite are complementary to each other.  Fording streams of years,
Shouldering the waxing and waning moons, as if by an inspired motion—Stars, now tarnished;
Lost in the glare of the universe’s harbor basin—At the moment’s first fire, the furnace

Blows cold air; if to break silver circuits, for fear they might obstruct the words. Furnace
Flames might have leapt out of the firebox, the chariot rider maintains the expression—Moon
Enclosing one in these deserted places. Such as waking to find hall mirrors shattered—tarnished
Reputations, and all the contracts annulled—too devastated to curse the digital fugitive, silver
In our nakedness under the full moon. Our clinical outlook continues—for the cure of the years
Relentlessly pursues. All the while concentrating metals or unconfessed sins, one is overthrown.

And driving off in respective vehicles –whipped to overcome the distance—one is overthrown.
Determined to preserve our instruments from the encroaching damp, we light the furnace.
We were deceived at first by the precipitate behavior of others, set out to achieve in years
What they expect. That is, the prepared departure was a flight from a disgusting smell, moon
Delirious—Reins frozen in the hands, the wound festering en-route. Draughts from silver-lined
Canteens dry on our lips too soon—the rattling cargo is safe under a protective layer of tarnish.

I find this evening’s transports overthrown for the familiar; a heart, though tarnished
Is satisfied with what is received—like wedding silver. Just that to lay here with the furnace
Cycling—Without you, I do what the dream years dispose, with a spine exposed to moonlight.