A Book of Hours
This poem came to me after a visit to London, where I was thunderstruck by the scale and beauty of the restored Reading Room at the British Museum. I was also wrestling with Existentialism at the time.
A Book of Hours
There was Time when its Arrow
flowed like a ticking clock
as it carved the future from the past
like a blind sculptor in one dimension
but, since there is no Now,
I live by reveries of hours,
each one a diegesis, each mimed
in chromatic silence;
an hour under the British Museum
Reading Room's golden-blue cupola
or a Summer morning's airing
through Russell Square,
Sartre in hand, floating in harmony
with singing birds
as, one by one, the hours
vanish in the freighted air.
In fading light
through smoky London trees,
where the wind kicks
crackled leaves at late commuters,
I fly
to where the river flows:
down East to the dirty sea;
the Thames, like me
and Sartre,
condemned to be free.
Christopher Hubbard
Perth,
2017
Chris Hubbard
Sun 15th Jan 2017 01:54
Thanks Cynthia, and for your welcome to WOL. I really appreciate it (especially from this distance!)
I have a folio of eclectic and unpublished work dating back twenty years and more; it's taken me ages to get round to sharing some of them.
Your positive response, and others, give me encouragement to submit more, and to make the most of what WOL offers - on both sides of the world.
Chris Hubbard
Perth, WA.