Star Carol
Across the field the city glows;
people shift from work to home;
the lights are steady in the tube;
moonlight silvers the great dome:
dome and spire and roof and mind
contain the hopes of humankind.
Out there, beyond, within, beneath,
the lights are glimmering like stars:
Come to us now, come now! they cry.
The moonlight strikes off speeding cars.
Cars and chariots burn in dreams
and everywhere light runs and streams.
George Szirtes
I think you're at the end of your day over in the UK - I hope you had a lovely Christmas!
ReplyDeleteA springboard to discovering this writer - I have sent this to a Londoner friend now living here in Montréal...
ReplyDeleteIt also brings to mind the French singer Barbara's "Joyeux Noël', an urbane take on Christmas. Perhaps Barbara (Monique Serf) shares in the secular-Jewish underpinnings revealed in Szirtes' writings. Barbara is very precise about aspects of her characters' dress, marking them in time, space and social class:
"En smoking de velour vert, en col roulé blanc
Et le cœur en bandoulière marchant à pas lents"
"Bottée noire souveraine et gantée de blanc
Elle allait pour dire je t'aime tout en chantonnant"....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monique_Serf
J'aime beaucoup Barbara.
All best wishes for 2008. I love my new Celt boots btw.
ReplyDelete