Umbra Velaminis

SHADE of the veil, the king’s covering seen as its own shadow under the Sister’s working. Once already she has shadowed this sovereign, his shape stripped to its blue bones; here she turns her shadow on the cloth that hid him, and gives the veil an umbra of its own. He appeareth as the great range over the wide river, his crown still given to the cloud, though in this working the cloud alone keeps its white while stone and wood and the winding Snake are sunk together into one deep blue. His office is to prove that even a covering casts a shadow: the cloth at his brow was red beneath, then white, now drowned in blue, unchanged through all three, only differently lit. He stands where another stood with the same camera, fourscore years gone, and keeps the pose; only now the night holds the lens. The veil was made to hide the king; veiled now in turn, it is itself the thing seen.