Contrails.
What would Howard
if, when towered
Cumuli
or Cirri flowered,
what would he have thought or written,
if, above the fields of Britain,
up on high,
and playful as an Ahrimanic kitten,
he had seen stretch right across the blue
contrails from aeroplanes? But never flew
aught but dragonfly
then,and birds and bats, and other insects too.
Or if Shelley
rising early
and raising eye
to his clouds of loved Italy,
had seen planes through a widened rent
in the broken woof of that wind built tent
(off to Dubai?)
leave contrails there where stratus never went?
Now that clouds are surrogated
the vault itself is violated.
Techno sky!
How can antidotes then be created?
Maybe only if we’re able
When round about swarm toil and trouble
like incubi
to create a blue bell bubble.
By this I mean an inner space.
Out there cruel prowls the Wolf of fearsome face
and dark, insistent cry.
Within, a Sun illumined, Sun warmed Samothrace.
© Stephen Schaffhauser.
