If I hadn’t experienced it at another complex in Kurdistan, I might have attached little credence to Byron’s account of sunset at the tomb of Niamatullah, despite the formal beauty of the passage:

While the cadent sun throws lurid copper streaks across the sand-blown sky, all the birds of Persia have gathered for a last chorus. Slowly, the darkness brings silence, and they settle themselves to sleep with diminishing flutterings, as of a child arranging its bedclothes …

There, winding down the day in forty-four cadent strokes. And then: