By day a dirty cobweb of dull wires
defaced the city like a child’s scribble,
meaningless; parallel tracks of tyres
railing their crazy freight across the skies.
No worse a city than a thousand others;
neglected, colourless, the slipshod sea
swelled or shrank from the shore; the craft
rode high or lurched, swinging to their tethers.
But every night the street lamps catch and kindle.
Jewelled Piraeus then (dried salt behind the eyes)
burns in the evening, laced with loops of light,
sparkling with filaments of pain, of spurious fires,
aping the mature explosions of the sun
stabbing the Aegean. To enchant the night,
we weave this silent brilliance like a web
over our shoddy city, an unsteady miracle.
Image credit: Subhrajyoti07
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
