The Night Poem by David Stern

The night has spread her vast sorrow
above my head
With flickering candles of suns
long dead
The vigil lights for smothered love
and extinguished hope
And thin white streaks drifting across,
incense-like

But watch now!
Quick shadows cast a heavy curtain
of velvet black
And dragon sweeps the third of the stars
with his tail
(Despair is his name)
Now the growing void devours all:
The sparks and brights —
Gone
All that ever mattered —
Gone