Entry #26 - Vancouver Lights

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Years ago I came across a poem called "Vancouver Lights" that I really enjoyed. Since I've down a few Vancouver centric posts, I thought I would also bit a few bits of Vancouver literature up as well. So without further ado, here is "Vancouver Lights" by Earle Bidney:

About me the night moonless wimples the mountains wraps ocean land air and mounting sucks at the stars The city throbbing below webs the sable peninsula The golden strands overleap the seajet by bridge and buoy vault the shears of the inlet climb the woods toward me falter and halt Across to the firefly haze of a ship on the gulps erased horizon roll the lambent spokes of a lighthouse

Through the feckless years we have come to the time when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling delight Welling 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 comes flooding the primal ink

On this 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 beleaguered by darkness this twinkle we make in a corner of emptiness how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress will never in the range of her microscope find it? Our Phoebus himself is a bubble that dries on Her slide while the 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 conjured these flames hooped these sparks by our will From blankness and cold we fashioned stars to our size and signalled Aldebaran 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 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