1

Scimitar in the January sky –
it starts again,

the moon as resurgent emblem.
‘Renewal’, so its tacit lunar hum

might be saying with mirthless irony,
‘beckons’.

Well, why not wax as well as wane?

2

… Scimitar in the frost-clear sky
seeming to cut its own shape stroke by stroke

until it hangs there, above
us, staring down like

a painting by a cold-eyed master-monster
who has foreseen more

than we can, without flinching, bear
to contemplate the thought of.