Light is fading, and with it the sun’s warmth. The room—golden and glorious just then—seems bigger and impossibly empty without that radiant guest. Drenched of the life it bestowed upon them for that brief, sacred moment, what adorned the room now shrunk in size. They will swell again, in size and in beauty, shortly before tomorrow’s sun retreats, the end of the final opening act before the moon takes stage. But the music hasn’t stopped—it has been playing since the sun came to visit. Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Schubert.

‘Isn’t it pleasant—isn’t life just wonderful?’ I said to the sunlit room that beamed back. It said nothing but knew everything.

Sitting in the now dark room cold with the night’s chill I remember sunlight dancing and laughing in the capable arms of music, that which stroked and soothed and spoke the unspeakable truth. So high is that sound only shivering brought me back to tend to demands of the body, soul’s meagre shell. Goosebumps and aching muscles anchor me but now Mahler is playing and I think of the night.

The sunlight that danced only a moment ago receded into the irretrievable past bound, oxymoronically, to be present again only tomorrow.