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Countdown.

“…mosques…were built with mortar that had been mixed with musk. …It is even said…that the Mosque of Zobiade still smells of musk today.” –John Trueman, The Romantic Story of Scent (1975)
[A great poem is such a mosque.]

"To be a person of no consequence, to speak without power, is a bewilderingly awful condition, as though you were a ghost, a beast, as though words died in your mouth, as though sound no longer traveled."

Mallarmé: Salut (my tr)

Zilch, froth, pure poem
Just to gar a goblet
So a distant flock dunks
Of mermaids, many upside down.

Sundry friends, we are sailing:
At the stern, already I stand;
Y’all at the stately bow break
That surge of sizzle & winter.

A wonderful wooziness prods me
Not recking even its roll
To hoist upright this hail

(Loneliness, lodgement, glimmer)
For whatever it is that earns
Our sheet’s wan shelter.

This Moment.