I. Star-Wound

The serpent coils the newborn star,
A band of shadow drawn afar,
A measured arc, a silent bar
that binds the burning core.

No haste.
No haste.
The long, slow draw
of gravitation’s ancient law
a circle carved before God saw
the shape of sky or shore.

II. The Deep Circuit

It circles when the light is young.
It circles when the song is sung.
It circles when the last is hung
in ash across the sky.

Not fall,
not flight
but turning will,
the quiet wheel no brake can still
the ancient writ by Eden’s quill,
the curve we can’t deny.

III. The Loom of Return

A memory older than the dust,
than iron, bone, or mortal trust
before the word, before the must
of hunger, fear, or claim.

It keeps
the way.
It holds the trace
of embers lost in time and space,
the path the stars decline to pace
yet circle all the same.

IV. The Name Beneath Motion

No tongue has shaped the serpent’s name.
No scripture fixed its steady aim.
No myth has caught the dateless frame
that girds the outer sphere.

Yet still
it turns.
It does not cease.
It powers comet’s cold decrease
It moves the worlds that can’t release
their orbit of the near.

V. The Serpent Speaks

I move because the burning moves.
I rest because the darkness proves.
I turn where every turning grooves
its mark on stone and flame.

No birth.
No end.
No breaking hour.
I am the curve within the power.
The orbit is the only flower
time dares to let remain.

I have the name god’s cannot know.
I neither rise nor fall nor grow.
I am the stream the stars must flow
to recognise their core.

Draw near.
Draw near.
But do not stay.
All things that come must turn away.
The circle is the only way.
The circle, and no more.