Vancouver Lights

[mbarrick]

Vancouver Lights By Earle Birney, 1941 About me the night moonless wimples the mountains wraps the ocean land air and mounting sucks at the stars The city throbbing below webs the peninsula Streaming the golden strands overleap the seajet by bridge and bouy vault the shears of the inlet climb the woods toward me falter and halt Across to the firefly haze of a ship on the gulf's erased horizon roll the spokes of a restless lighthouse   Through the feckless years we have come to the time when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling deligh Wlling from Europe's bog through Africa flowing and Asia drowning the lonely lumes on the oceans tiding up over Halifax now to this winking outpost come flooding the primal ink   On the mountain's brutish forehead with terror of space I stir of the changeless night and the stark ranges of nothing pulsing down from beyond and between the fragile planets We are a spark beleagered by darkness this twinkle we make in a corner of the emptiness how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress will never in the range of her microscope find it? Our Phoebus himself in a bubble that dries on Her slide while Nubian wears for an evening's whim a necklace of nebulae   Yet we must speak we the unique glowworms Out of the waters and rocks of our little world we cunningly conjured these flames hooped these sparks by our will From blankness and cold we fashioned stars to our size and signalled Aldeberan This must we say whoever may be to hear us if murk devour and none weave again in gossamer:   These rays were ours we made them and unmade them Not the shudder of continents doused us the moon's passion nor crash of comets In the fathomless heat of our dwarfdom our dream's combustion we contrived the power the blast that snuffed us No one bound Prometheus Himself he chained and consumed his own bright liver O stranger Plutonian descendant or beast in the stretching night— there was light

Vancouver Lights from the Grouse Mountain Chalet