B r u g g e

Because some clouds hung low over three towers
and sunlight clarified the waters to a language of glimmer and glisten
the city was in dialogue with itself

birds made intricate patterns in preparation for migration
(that other life the life of words gesture towards and live out)
and then there was that stillness of meanings and possibilities

I walked amid a multitude and found joy in this
I walked alone and there was joy in this also
became eventually one of the night-shadows listening to
the night-songs of the world

and the clarity of moonlight edging towards the towers
(which can be named but not described)
a language of parallel worlds and their dialogue

and the notion that l should surrender to it all
and acknowledge what it alluded to
which could have been this specific place
or any other place which bore the same intensity

for which I sought suitable quotations
an accuracy of language in a given time and place
which would give credence to the fact that
"out of all this beauty something must come"
and bear its imprimatur upon what thereafter followed

when what thereafter followed was what had been prophesied
or was as least latent within the song-lines of the world.