As my rattling Transdev bus chugs on

In its grumpy rush-hour peregrination

Through the already darkening day's end

Of Bradford's murky northern outskirts,

Condensation-glazed lad-scratched glass

Metamorphoses the winterworld outside

Into a semi-opaque panchromatic fairyland.

 

As dozy daylight dissolves to torpid twilight,

Mundane suburbia subtly transforms itself

Quasi-miraculously into something magical

Where orange angels with golden halos askew

Hover, swathed in a heavenly hangover haze,

As swirling sodium streetlights suffuse into

A slate-grey mushroom-soup sky-swamp.

 

But it is coming close to Christmas, so

A myriad other shimmering merrylights

Melodically oust the prosaic public lamps

As cataracts of electric-blue LCD icicles

Abseil almost nonchalantly from

Titanium-white snow ski-slope precipices

Of sundry tawdry council-house roofs.

 

In the stone-built Victorian village centre

A psychedelic space-rocket of a Norway Spruce

Prepares for incipient take-off to the stars

Amidst encircling red and white flares

Of bad-tempered brakelights and hasty headlights

Of traffic turning at the mini-roundabout

In a kaleidoscopically gyrating quickstep.

 

Square-eyed pale white gogglebox glazing

Gazes out above the holly-wreathed letterboxes

Of a hundred humdrum hallways

In the squat semi-detached suburbs of Shipley

And twitching behind heavy plush-velvet curtains

Twinkling treelights squint suspiciously

At passing traffic at a kerb-crawl snail pace.

 

And, above, a cool blue pool of a moon

Swims silently in the plum-purple gloom

Of a dusk-dark deep December evening

While, on high, shining silver, a solitary star

Sighs wistfully, still dreaming of that night

It stood, not above grubby bustling Bradford,

But the breathless anticipation of Bethlehem.