When the moment arrives, it arrives like this:

Dark, like the hour of the silent stars
the hour of the shrill crickets,
the hour of waning hopes,

when all is dark
in my soul:

Friend, at this moment,
I cease the world;
At this moment,
just you and I in the entire universe;
Silent companion, guardian
of the door to all mysteries,

the cause of all causes,
if I must reason like that,
or an unknowable vast,

unknowable, as I am, now,
but an essential knowledge
in some mystic part
of my own hidden,
concealed being,

if I am of sterner stuff than
the pyres that churn out the stars,
if I am of firmer strength than
the cutting arms of time,

reveal this now, friend,
for this is my dark hour,
the loneliest hour
before the eclipsed dawn.