It’s night. Across the Hudson River, <br />the New York skyline at its most <br />romantic: sprinkled in its wide white way <br />with office and apartment lights; <br />wispy night clouds add their movement, <br />setting off this jewelled velvet; <br />in the mid-ground, a fire-launch <br />throws a high and spotlit fountain <br />to assert that manmade beauty’s not forgotten, <br />and citizens may share this high-rise paradise.. <br /> <br />The French, who have a knack for the poetic phrase, <br />might pin down in words this strange emotion <br />of a city seen at night – something <br />like ‘nostalgie de l’inconnu’ – <br />a nostalgia for the unknown… <br />paradoxical sweet yearning in <br />a thousand lighted windows behind which <br />humans like ourselves whom we will never meet <br />share our lives; in this still night scene <br />(the distant sounds but faintly heard, <br />though not on our saved screens) <br />elevated to the holy mystery of life; <br />the soundless magic of a nightclub <br />saxophone and wistful clarinet; <br />a rhapsody in moods of blue.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/screensaver-2/
