The city bathes in an orange tinted glow.
Sunshine with gentleness but firmness wins the space
over the shadows becoming blue.
It flows
through the polluted air with some grace,
ignoring rising bustle on the streets,
and doubles the intensity of leaves and flowers
and fuchsia pink of dustbins.
When it meets
the Metropolitan Cathedral’s stained glass,
or signboards of seedy pubs, or council houses,
it fills, regardless of our notion of prominence -
the great buildings and the shabby ones,
with magnitude of beauty and of providence
and, in their windows reflecting, dance.
It’s seeking equally the passers-by, who scurry,
locked up inside their busy minds’ shells,
or a beggar with nowhere to hurry,
who sleeps by the Adelphi hotel.
The music of the morning is expanding,
it’s offering to everyone delight,
it’s seeking nothing more but understanding
and gives us in the higher realms insight.
The colours sing their glory to the morning
in the expanding space of Albert Dock,
and in the crimson gate that is cloning
a bit of China with a visual shock.
The daybreak music, lively, persistent,
with all its softness spreading its domain,
wants us to stop and think about the instant
where hints of an infinity remain.
The city’s echoing its rhythm but takes the lead
with added vigour of the cars and racing bikes,
and their unshakable in its perception creed
of business to be done somehow strikes
a disaccord.
The music of the light
is claiming patiently its realm, its domain
over the hiding darkness of the night
that in retreating shadows remains.
Its violin is resolute and clear,
it sounds since the time of Adam’s fall
for those who are able still to hear
Adagio of the eternal call.
4 November 2011