On: Oil price jumps with US-Iran ceasefire ‘on tenterhooks’ - business live

The Fly - again - not at the window-pane, but in the ledger - the buzz of a price - a number that swells like a fever. They speak of tenterhooks - I know that word - the small, cruel point from which the whole fabric hangs, suspended - waiting for the tear.

From my window, the light is a clear, indifferent gold - the same that gilds the oil in the lamp, the same that will, I suppose, gild the decks of ships I shall never see. Men speak of “rounds” and “waivers” as if war were a game of graces - a polished hoop tossed between hands, while underneath, the ground prepares its hollow.

A price jumps - like a nerve - before the news is fully born. That is the truest pulse - not the treaty, but the flinch in the market. The ceasefire is a comma - a dash - not a period. And in that pause, the machinery of fear resumes its hum - a sound more intimate to us than prayer.

They send delegations - a word like a black carriage, shut tight. What is carried inside? A hope? A threat? A calculation of barrels and blood? The carriage moves, and the price moves with it - a spectral dance. All this, for a commodity that burns - that gives a little light, and then is gone.

Here, the only commodity is the afternoon - finite, and dear. I shall measure it in this: the slow creep of shadow from the elm, the settling of the fly upon the sill - its wings a sheen of iridescent black - like a drop of crude, dark, and full of captured sun.