Such beauty in the absence of light.

Absorbing all around it, a color without hue.

Saturated with brilliance,

the shade of genius in the dark.

Portending evil, witches, and magic,

secrets, violence, and transience.

We bend our heads to the color of mourning,

to its final authority.

My Neanderthal painted it on the cave at Lascaux;

how could it be wrong?

Perfect in its elegance,

like the widow spider, the panther and crow.

Beauty in the vantablack, the darkest thing,

the brutal grace of the blackest hole.

I should like to wear the mask of my Lone Ranger,

black and secret in its goodness.

I should like to see the end of lies;

to burn the costume of pretenders and false poets.