He thinks of their love in illustrations for children, in last thin pages fluttering closed, a line gently, passively unfinished, a pastel hesitancy: Blicero’s hair is darker, shoulder-length and permanently waved, he is an adolescent squire or page looking into an optical device and beckoning the child Gottfried with a motherly or eager-to-educate look… now he is far away, seated, at the end of an olive room, past shapes going out of focus, shapes Gottfried can’t identify as friend or enemy, between him and—where did he—it’s already gone, no… they’re beginning to slide away now faster than he can hold, it’s like falling to sleep—they begin to blur CATCH you can hold it steady enough to see a suspender-belt straining down your thighs, white straps as slender as the legs of a fawn and the points of the black… the black CATCH you’ve let a number of them go by, Gottfried, important ones you didn’t want to miss… you know this is the last time… CATCH when did the roaring stop? Brennschluss, when was Brennschluss it can’t be this soon… but the burnt-out tail-opening is swinging across the sun and through the blonde hair of the victim here’s a Brocken-specter, someone’s, something’s shadow projected from out here in the bright sun and darkening sky into the regions of gold, of whitening, of growing still as underwater as Gravity dips away briefly… what is this death but a whitening, a carrying of whiteness to ultrawhite, what is it but bleaches, detergents, oxidizers, abrasives—Streckefuss he’s been today to the boy’s tormented muscles, but more appropriately is he Blicker, Bleicheröde, Bleacher, Blicero, extending, rarefying the Caucasian pallor to an abolition of pigment, of melanin, of spectrum, of separateness from shade to shade, it is so white that CATCH the dog was a red setter, the last dog’s head, the kind dog come to see him off can’t remember what red meant, the pigeon he chased was slateblue, but they’re both white now beside the canal that night the smell of trees oh I didn’t want to lose that night CATCH a wave between houses, across a street, both houses are ships, one’s going off on a long, an important journey, and the waving is full of ease and affection CATCH last word from Blicero: “The edge of evening… the long curve of people all wishing on the first star…. Always remember those men and women along the thousands of miles of land and sea. The true moment of shadow is the moment in which you see the point of light in the sky. The single point, and the Shadow that has just gathered you in its sweep…”

Always remember.

The first star hangs between his feet.

Now—

DESCENT