So, I hope to be at the big Marxist derring-do in London this June. One of the people headlining is the excellent David Harvey. I have been reading his book about the ongoing crisis (I had to go into the Adam Smith building to get it, ironically: it seems the craven enemies who dwell there have seized not only all the Marxist books but also all the squashy chairs, damn them!) and I was struck by some of the things he, coming from a background as a geographer, says about cities, nature, and humankind.
The thrust is that a place like Glasgow is as 'natural' as an ant-hill, a bird's nest, a beaver-dam - or indeed any part of Earth between the poles, since it's all been pretty dramatically changed by humans. Species changing their environment is natural. The point is that if we've changed ours in a way that we're both wrecking it for the other species on which we depend, and creating a kind of life that feels 'unnatural' - grim, ugly, and lonely - for ourselves, we can change it again in another way. And that means, among many other things, taking on the city as a space and an idea and seizing it on behalf of the public.
Also, it's an uncommonly nice day in Glasgow. Result: the following.
I walked through the
city, as the sun spilled its light on sandstone and slate. In the parks,
flowers bloomed and each tree’s shadow told the time on the grass. The river
flashed and the canal was a mirror. The tower-blocks stuck up, obscene fingers
cursing a clear-blue sky.
I walked through the
city one misty afternoon. The river laughed nastily, and coiled up in wisps out
of his dale. Streetlamps turned into orange eyes, and made me cast too many
shadows.
I walked through the
city one warm purple evening. Steeples and the first stars pierced the piled
clouds. The moon was a silvery smudge. The wind murmured; a fox screeched;
there was a whispering of lives, close-by, unseen.
I walked through the
city on a blustery day. The wind swept everything clean and I could see for
miles. The bare moors rolled away, like waves before the gust.
I walked through the
city at night, and out on to the moors, and looked back: blue stars spread out
above, and yellow stars below. It wasn’t quite silent: cars were grumbling in the
dark. The city dozed, dreaming drunken dreams.
If night and day and
sun and fog can build new cities here, then why not me?
I like this. Not quite poetry, but very poetic prose, somehow.
ReplyDeleteThe following is not my own work:
ReplyDeletePoem about the difference between poetry and prose
A poem
Moves down the page
Faster than a novel.