Beauty was, for him, cold,
hexagonal, perfect
in all its parts, beheld

once and once only. Locked
beneath his lens, light-spun
and light-refracting, flecked

with coal dust and pollen,
his flakes shone with lunar
loveliness... And we can

see, in these hundred-year-
old prints, plain evidence
of his attention, care,

and chilling confidence:
in the manifold world,
its willed evanescence,

its subtle signs and wild
and blinding storms. Did it
suprise him, to be killed

by a surfeit of white -
a blazing increment
of stars, ferns, wands and bright

escutcheons, an argent
army of perfectness?
Look, and see his wind-bent

back, his boots cakes with ice
his glazed eyes... Did he have,
in his last seditious

delirium, one brave
black thought: did God murder
us all with too much love?