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# Paradise lost and found
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-2493jsp/
- Published: 2005-05-09T23:05:00.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:50:44.000Z
- Author: Robert Minhinnick
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17

**Paradise**

Above me the sparrow  
and above the sparrow

the shape of the hawk,  
the sparrowhawk itself.

But how soon the sky is emptied of both  
the sparrow and its terrorised song.

Yet one drop of blood  
has fallen onto my hand

and I carry it gravely like a child  
wanting a father’s word for some unworded thing,

evidence, surely evidence,  
though of what he will now never say

and soon I am on the summit of the dune  
and out on the ocean

I see the altars of rain  
from which shapes of birds are rebounding

as if from a forcefield, black  
sparks from the black

conflagration of rain coming my way  
at such a speed the eye can hardly take it in

and now that black rain  
is falling and the black shapes of birds,

sparrows and sparrowhawks, crying in their outrage,  
and there’s lightning like the circuitry, botched,

modern, fed through a medieval mosque,  
and how soon it is twisting around me, the storm’s black

jalabiyah, and the rain looking like  
some ziggurat the dictator

demanded built, a black and empty  
tower where the rain twists itself

in handfuls of black roots  
ripped from this earth,

and the storm’s a perfect cylinder  
constructed by the mechanics of the air

and I think surely if there are paradigms  
of paradise they are found

within the storm’s anterooms,  
lit now only

by the black light of its rose-window,  
for now it’s a cathedral that’s passing overhead,

a supersonic corral  
of prayer with the sound of choirs shouting their amazement

and the rain crackling like soldered rods  
as if the stones on this summit

were still hot from their first configuration,  
and then it is gone, growling into the north, gone from the dunes,

the storm headed north,  
and who were they, I wonder,

the man in the black coat with the child  
in her black hood under his arm

who brushed past when I could not move  
or even stand for rain

leaving me behind and my sky  
and my skin and my voice gnawed white.

This article appears as part of **openDemocracy**‘s online debate on the politics of climate change. The debate was developed in partnership with the British Council as part of their ZeroCarbonCity initiative – a two year global campaign to raise awareness and stimulate debate around the challenges of climate change.