To Sleep in the Shadows
 
Dense is the umbra:
A crawling shadow,
Sombre as dusk,
Cascading tones of darkness
Into a matt, flat pool.
 
The sable hands of night
Reach out with raven
Strokes of unseen fingers
To steal the colour and
Snuff out the light.
 
Sightless, underexposed eyes,
With veiled, visionless irises,
Dilate vainly, attempting
To capture any light
From thieving darkness,
 
Before the ebony congeals
Into dancing funereal forms
Of raven-haired beasts
And blasted fragments of
Deathly corpses.
 
Thrown into my unseeing sight,
A vision from dusk,
With Black made of white and swirling
Points of pipe clay stars, leading to a pure
Black, white, whirlpool of sleep.

The supernova SN1054 was first observed today in 1054, the remnants of which now form the Crab Nebula.

Slavery is abolished in the state of New York on this day in 1827.