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 fathers 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 theres lightning like the circuitry, botched,
modern, fed through a medieval mosque,
and how soon it is twisting around me, the storms 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 storms 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 storms anterooms,
lit now only
by the black light of its rose-window,
for now its a cathedral thats 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 openDemocracys 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.
