Ongoing #25

For the next poem the cartoon in the book has the page divided into four vertical sections. The first shows a night scene of a graveyard with bats and a skeleton, the second a day scene with birds, butterflies and a smiling girl. The other two, where I have written the poem, are blank.

Two Nights: Two Days - Remembering Africa

Here, now,
the sky is empty
and not even black,
merely a darker grey.
The stars are gone
lost in the eternal twilight
of the technological world.

There, then,
the sky was crowded,
a million sequins
on a velvet cloth.
The stars eternal
were spirits of the night
and the land was empty.

Here, now,
the city screams
and the heat smells
of machinery.
The sun is gone
lost behind the haze
in a hidden sky.

There, then,
the plains murmured
and the heat smelled
of animals and dirt.
The sun was god
ruling a sharper world
from a lonely sky.