Page 18 - Contrast1984v26

EOLIAN POLE

"Or music by the wind night sent

Through the strings of Some still instrument

Or moonlight on a midnight stream "

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream

Shmey

Out I walk into the night,
Over melting snow which lay
Lingering on the ground;
Jaundiced light floods from lamps,
Hitting bare unconscious trees,
Giving them a dying look;
While on an iron flagpole,
Flagclips by wind are blown
To clang in unsure metronome.

Looking through a window pane
In a dark and empty church:
Rows of wooden pews recede
To a square of alter stone
Cold and germless, balanced sure .••
Almost perfect symmetry!
But still my ears sense the siren
As the flagclips bash the iron
Turning from the ordered church
I hear the hit, ring, and lurch
As flagclips are blown
In arbitrary metronome.