NOCTURNE

    Here in the foreground,
    Black, silver and blue,
    Slates glint with the frost.
    Further back, churches
    Spire up in starlight.
    See the chimneys curl
    And the rooftops slant
    So sensually
    On those hard angles
    Of smokestacks and walls
    With dark curtains drawn,
    In the street below.
    Observe now, midground,
    The vague huddled figure
    In a dark trench-coat,
    Hurrying along
    The moonlit cobbles,
    Just past that street lamp.
    See it hesitate
    At some sharp corner.
    Does it move toward
    A familiar hearth,
    Out of the cold night;
    Or will it proceed,
    Further on outward
    Into the background
    Of a destiny
    Yet to crystallize,
    Black, silver and blue,
    In the icy dawn?

   (2012)

Another one that came very quickly after I’d been looking at a photograph of a Prague roofscape by the Czech photographer, Josef Sudek who I discovwered recently. The poem is by no means a literal description of the picture – it might just as easily recall scenes from the film noir, ‘ The Third Man’ – but it was the original point of departure.

The picture is one of a set of four that we bought from a photographer (not Sudek) who had a stall on the Charles Bridge in Prague several years ago. Interesting how all these elements come together...