At my back is Durham’s Romanesque
Te Deum. I turn my face to the sky
and this wonder – forged in a commonwealth
of system, iron and grace by private
genius out of public patronage,
on the grassed remains of a pithead baths.
Wherever you are in its vicinity,
in its line of sight, you can look nowhere else –
at its span, its height, it wings; at the
uncompromising power, unambiguous
vitality. When you look directly,
it is earthed but ready to soar – from your eye’s
corner, just about to take off or land.
It is rusting, except where children sliding
have polished its feet. It seems naturally
an ‘it’, not androgynous and neither
female nor male. It seems like the solar wind,
a flood tide, a stand of birches, winding gear,
a lathe, a mould. I read the graffiti;
note the engineers’ marks; count the rivets;
conjure the subtle, oh, gentle throb
of enormous wing beats; feel the skill,
the grasp, the joy; imagine the steady
tremor of turbines. Celebrating life,
prefiguring death, this weighty messenger,
this kind harbinger, welded like a ship’s
hull, embraces the air.
By David Selzer