Nativity at Night (Geertgen Tot Sint Jans)

#22

The sound of time is the sound of light,
So the morning sun would seem to say;
But now, when it’s either soon or late,
Is silent—dark, when it's any shade of gray.
Infancy (now in its shroud of amnesia)
Saw a thing as it was there to hear
With ecstatic nerves of synaesthesia,
Or like a planet without an atmosphere,
Naked to the bombardment of the stars,
Spun through space. That memory, stored
In our synapses, fights a prolonged war
To glimpse what our mind has barred;
A light the color and the sound of time
We know is not a product of the mind.