Contrasts hold the moment:
between most going home and others
opening up the night of fun and hope;
between the brightening lights and windows
and the deep, darkening blue of the evening sky;
between fading outlines of people, indistinct in a moving crowd
and sharp lines of rooftops with cupolas of copper
and classical columns of a confident, forgotton time.
The symbols of imperial pride
are now neither understood nor affordable
in a city given over to money
and the carnal delights of shopping, shagging
and swilling beer.
Atop his column,
Earl Grey surveys his scene with studied indifference.
Celebrating a century of civic peace,
put there by a grateful people in 1838
hoping, perhaps knowing,
that the dark, satanic side of it,
at least at home, would pass away
in Progress’s inexorable march.
His proud monument
ignores the world beyond
with slaves not yet free and Africa, India and much else
on the map painted red and
under the imperial boot.
The world he surveys has gone
replaced by another more violent and misunderstood.
Here, now, in this city
without the pits and ships and steam hammers
that forged the generations behind those now
scurrying home from their offices and shops,
the new world blindly thrives,
a cosmos of greed, debt and fragile hope.
Swarming around his head, fewer now than then,
the starlings congregate.
They swoop and dive with one mind,
carving fractal swirls
against the azure blue dark
before they settle down in huddled rows on balustrades
and parapets high above the emptying streets.
If Grey could look down, lower his gaze
he’d see a different world
and like Kier Hardie, looking down from the moon,
in another poem I like,
not know whether to laugh or cry.
For the sounds of starlings come now also from below,
from half-naked girls
giggling, shrieking and stumbling on their heels
past swaggering blokes, half-dressed
with shaved heads and earrings
from whom, as they pass, all the perfumes of Arabia mingle
in a promise of delights to come.
Each has his hopes and perhaps his fears
But they are not on view;
except in the swirling patterns the old Earl can see
on the ground as well as above his head.
These creatures stay together
in a dance that not one of them comprehends.
Each one is free, but tightly bound in a pattern
beyond control with a purpose impossible to know,
in a world beyond caring.
Bill Williamson
