I hammered this thing out in about 20 minutes on my flight between London and Beijing whilst rather knackered from a long flight and then promptly forgot about it. It was mainly an exercise in stringing words together in a way that makes the words look pretty and me look like a pretentious wanker, but I like to think it turned out OK. Enjoy.
Dawn over China
I return from the airplane toilet on infant-weak legs, atrophied from seating.
I stumble-walk along the aisle, headrests crutches, and here it is I sit
As I do so, I open the window.
The outside is a line, deep blue grey below the horizon, deep blue above
But there is a line, burning in heraldic glory of the sun’s arrival
Orange paints a road in cloud, calligrapher’s brush of brilliance and light
In regal purple-red are clad the clouds from where dawn shall come
Below, clouds and mountaintops cannot be distinguished
Scudding white may be vapour, may be snow upon stone
Distance and dimness render them unreal
Above, blue, the blue of relentless July haze-days
Days where the copperplate sun is a whip of heat
No clouds are here to protect from solar glare
At the base of the red light, the first edge of the sun’s light is visible
A rising crown, it tickles the cloud, teasing the day with promise
In predawn light, I fancy for a moment that the plane is much lower than it is
I see coasts and hills in distant cumulus
A cove of white rendered grey through illumination-starvation
I stare out of the window, at the altitude of gods
My eye sees nothing below
Cloud, land, is meaningless to me
One may be other, I could never tell
I wait for illumination
I wait for sun’s clarification
I wait for sight of the land below
I wait for dawn over China
Verbal Fisticuffs 