Charles Tomlinson: Fire In A Dark Landscape

And where it falls, a quality

Not of the night, but of the mind

As when, on the moonlit roofs,

A counterfeit snow

Whitely deceives us. And yet ...

It is the meeting, of light

With dark, challenges the memory

To reveal itself, in an unfamiliar form,

As here: red branches

Into a transparency

In liquid motion, the winds'

Chimera of silk, twisting

Thickened with amber shadows,

A quality, not of the mind

But of fire on darkness.