The sunrise streets
are hammered gold
while mundane city bylaws gleam
with transient enlightenment
Not for the first time, I am reminded that much of my poetry is centred on the visual and heavily influenced by the quality of light.
The fragment above was written recently, inspired by a sunrise over the Mediterranean; but the Spanish day offers many other moments when the light simply can’t be ignored: at times it is completely overpowering and it certainly changes your view of things.
To balance the sunrise, here is an old piece written when I lived in an attic in Madrid some twenty years or more ago:
El Dorado
At midday
incandescent angles
pierced my eyes.Now all that remains
is honey-gold. Swallows rise
on updraughts: smuts
above the embers of the day.
don't confuse the narrator 