Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog no 49 Walking Through Suburban Streets, Night Coming Down

WALKING THROUGH SUBURBAN STREETS, NIGHT COMING DOWN

At first sight this poem seems merely descriptive or evocative of an atmosphere. Yet it is also a comment on the strangely-alienated world we have created in the suburbs of a lot of the western world where you can be surrounded by people but walk through streets and see almost no-one. This is contrasted with the natural worlds of sky and earth.

WALKING THROUGH SUBURBAN STREETS, NIGHT COMING DOWN

The sun’s already sunken, yet

departing rays still redden borders

of rising, storm-arousing cloud.

I walk the pathways of the dusk.

And westward, over final fire,

out-streams a gleam of growing whiteness.

Reflection from another world

is planet starlight: far nearby.

As twilight tires, Venus seems,

in one clear spot, a perfect glow:

a beacon from a world beyond

the fading houses down below.

Then other lights flash by on high

with roar that seems to bore through sky,

as half-concealed in cloud, a jet

bears others to far destinations.

In dwindling dusk the dark condenses

upon the cool, rain-boding air;

and donning my grey coat I stroll

through dimming, silent streets; I stroll

past grassy, private yards, past small,

still gardens on dark human-scape;

past all, not seen and never seeing

through walls of brick and curtained windows.

With final darkness, rain arrives;

leaves greet and gather nourishment,

and hidden, branched and clinging roots

absorb it from the ground of life.

Past window-bright, domestic walls,

I walk on wet road blackness, through

the silence of the suburb’s night

where nothing moves but windy rain-

until I turn a corner where

the glaring of a sudden car,

brief-lighting rain’s down-streaming sheets,

is dazzling to the dark-set sight.

Returning towards my own room’s shelter,

I walk past peopled, night-walled spaces,

past house-sealed lives within that are

all hidden here- nearby but far.

A figure, shadowed by the rain,

strides by to be away from night;

away from weave of dark and weather,

back to the spaces of set light.

Through harmonies of nascent darkness

is spread our strange-depressed design;

while sullen clouds, moon-covering,

are lit with white, ghost hues of time.