The Menger Sponge

God made everything out of nothing; but the nothing shows through —Paul Valéry Lost from all angles but the sun’s, This woken morning, It clicks its brilliance into place at once, If you follow the fall of light— A spider web, head-high, adorning The woodshed’s entrance like a sheet Of gold-shot fabric, metal-tight, That, even so, one handswipe could delete, Collapsing all That spacious architecture to a tacky ball. It brings to mind the mathematician’s Monstrous idea, The Menger sponge, where infinite excisions Out of a solid cube delete Its substance while its form stays clear: The central ninth is cut from a square; Eight smaller squares remain; repeat For each; and so on with this lattice of air: A formula For zero volume, infinite surface area. Enough. The estuary’s slung Like gold-shot cloth Over a gulf of shifting airs. Among Cloud-drifts of beaten eggwhite floats, As though confected of such froth, The mountain. Like a Chinese screen, The fabric of the view devotes Almost all blankness to this hanging scene, This one handsweep Of water, creased like the cheek of someone roused from sleep.