[A break from the Sphinx today with something lighter full of good cheer]

Hymn to Light

after Abraham Cowley

When they first let you out into darkness,

and, by fiat, you loosed change and becoming,

onto the lucid world, and slipped the womb of night,

that brought a smile to your old girl’s jaded lips

and broke the little black cloud you’d been till then.

So you flung a rainbow out to celebrate across the sky.

The girl so swift of foot that none can catch up,

whose warmth kneads water, air and earth to life,

and leavens the bread of the world. To make lighter

the burden of being and the world a better place to be.

Your spectral gifts kiss with a healthy tan

bodies outstretched on beaches in Ibiza

and Tenerife. Gladly you radiate

yourself out through the beauties of the world

with your full palette of joy. Dotting a blackberry

here, a buttercup there, pink cherry blossom

in the boughs in spring, bright autumn apples

and plums. Holly and mistletoe in winter.

Quicker than speeding arrow or thought or post,

your little messengers reach out across

light years and eons, into the atom’s core,

winged by the word of the almighty Lord.

Outbursts of sun flung out around our planet earth

are mirrored by the moon in our night sky.

The world in all its humblest glory revolves

quite literally around your golden crown;

all peoples, cowed, bow to your heavenly bonfire,

hearth of the whole wide world. The show

only goes on so long as you are there to see.

Nor do you spurn to brush with your glow those dismal

creatures of the night that live shrouded in gloom,

lighting like Christmas lights with fireflies the simplest

shrubbery, with phosphorescent germs

the trailing wakes ships make across the sea.

Your rising strikes fear into the shades that stalk

the night. Nocturnal predators go cower

in their dens and hide their noisome visages

from view. Owls, moths, and bats seek refuge

on the dark side of the globe

Dreams are dispelled

and eyes are wakened

from wishful thinking in sleep

to the realities of day.

The very dust dances in jubilation in your beams.