A Song at Twilight

Sheffield November

by John Stocks

Here now, in this city of eclectic trysts
Behind frosted glass, lovers seek rapprochement
As malign words are gathered like starlings
To the veiled threat of an occluded moon.

It’s the twilight! It changes everything:
Fractiously tripping salaried routines,
Pulling no punches in an arbitrary heist,
Plunging daylight into stark desolation.

Words are taken hostage, we sip in silence
Lattes, cappuccino americanos.
Here meditative angst prevails, perversity
Like edgy jazz, streetlights sail to infinity.

It’s early November and the evening creeps
Along Devonshire Green to Division Street.

And you can imagine the hoar frosts stirring
As winter stretches, gathering in the wings.
You remember how, in the encroaching gloom,
They carried your father out, a last cold kiss.

In November you will never love again
Or even dream a prophecy of kisses.
You will suffer unstructured liaisons
Exposed like a barren beach at turn of tide.

And yet there is beguiling beauty, soft light,
Jewelled raindrops dazzle in pale headlamps,
Dark eyes glitter in sallow autumn faces,
And globed lights hover like distant moons.

And we who choose to be bewildered,
Who seek the chaos in life’s denouement
In the remnants and the resonances,
Will always find redemption in the dark.

It’s early November and the evening creeps
Along Devonshire Green to Division Street.