Spider sitting
Atop a box of jewels
Guarding, guarding 
Watching from afar 

On the stage, heads roll, spirits sway
And childhood seems a lifetime away 
We toil, we falter, day after day 
Into so many diffracted arrays

In each tense, present future or past
Sand trickles down the hourglass
The scythe falls and fells, 
Every grass blade like a spell.

15.10.2020 

Erté (Roman de Tirtoff), illustration for Harper’s Bazaar, January 1927 cover