Ciclo CCXCII

The trembling hand traces the curve of the cannon’s bore as it cools under the iron plate—la tavola di ferro pressed flat against the uneven heat, the metal yielding not to prayer but to the geometry of a milled edge, the same geometry that sets the page’s ruled lines to catch the wandering eye before it strays; and the powder, sifted through silk so fine it measures the breath of air, burns with a flame that writes its equation in white light—these three are about the measure of what cannot be trusted to remain. The cannon bends when the eye of the founder is elsewhere; the page forgets what the hand does not write; the powder fails if the air itself is not weighed. Each is a device to hold a thing still in the moment it would unravel—heat, thought, ignition—forced into a shape that does not betray.