文章内容

The farewell glow of an exotic sun-setting
over the verdant hills of Canterbury,
is the remnant of the Platonic ideal for the caved eyes,
piercing into the heart of ancient sublimity,
and into the millennium silence adds a buzzing sound.
I breathe in the spectre of time and the air of the divine,
groping through like a wary night traveller,
mesmerized by the witchery fading daylight.

 

At the arched entrance of the up-piercing shrine
bathed in the residue of a day's glory
stood a middle-aged woman with a service badge,
weary of the day's work and the scenes changeless.
Her golden crisp lock stirred up in the breeze
to unveil her smile to me,a belated visitor,
meeting my inquiring eyes with apology:
“Sorry we are about to close,”she said.
"Tomorrow.Tomorrow may be a better day,
I told myself,nodding my thanks.

 

Two young men with blond hair stood there
looking up at the top of the sunlit spires,
knapsacks on their backs,cameras in hand.
My little German rang when they uttered a word or two
I heard their Hegelian meditation:"Das ist die Zeitgeist!
They knew it must be "the spirit of the time".
Perhaps in Germany,they had seen the same towers elsewhere
but without a single shot for memory,not knowing that
the grand Kolner Dom had almost come down to ashes
in the retaliating fires dropped by the young RAF pilots.
But now the last brush of the burning sun has faded
And the nightly peace will come,but just for how many hours?

 

Three young women hustled by
babbling the day's trivia with delight,
Their youthful faces flashed and flickered
on the street windowpanes of a bakery
birthday cakes with milk snow-white
and oozing cream in festival candlelight.
Their English perfume danced in the air
with their earthly joy and momentary ecstasy.
The memory of my tired peregrination
went with them along the flickering street pubs
and vanished at the crisscross of some darkening lanes.

 

Canterbury now at night is vibrating with sleepless English life
unknowingly seeing off a hustling English day.

 

Shortly the din of the day will get dim
And the depth of the dream will be dear.
The healing slumber will soon be disturbed!
The town will summon its Canterbury tales
Across its mute Kentish pastures and woods,
Breathe into life the pilgrims'hullabaloo:
The angry swear of a hallucinating king,
The quick resounding hooves of the four knights,
The pain of a sword in the hissing blood,
And the serene prayer of a dying saint!

 

Darkling I listen to the buzzing sound of the past:
a mirage from the never-never land in the depth of my mind.