A Strangely Familiar Room
In the same room
in the next town
in the dead of night.
The chair, the desk
the queen-sized bed
you haven't slept in, yet,
as usual.
Gazing out
from this high dark window
the city goes about its business
with complete indifference.
As if no one was watching.
As if the city
had emptied out.
The arterial roads
are the usual grid
of a well-planned city
in the flat Midwest ,
intersecting, receding
fanning out at your feet.
There are just a few toy-like cars,
no doubt arousing suspicion
so late at night.
And from such imposing height
they are soundless
and painfully slow.
The traffic lights
are tiny jewels of primary colour
lined up
one after the other,
clicking green-yellow-red
deliberate, set
handing-off to the next.
Controlling
the non-existent flow
of busy traffic.
Commanded from some electronic bunker
the lights run precisely
all night long,
which surely must have delighted
the city planners, and traffic czars,
the architects
of such pleasing order.
Like an automaton, they will go on and on;
or at least until a relay sticks, a transformer blows,
power-lines topple
electricity stops.
The world
as we know it
so far.
You are sleepless
in this unnamed metropolis
in this strangely familiar room.
And the traffic lights
in their seamless order
are an unexpected comfort.
As regular as a heartbeat
resting your head,
as your lover’s quiet breathing
beside you, in bed.
So you watch
exhausted,
longing for rest.
This poem was inspired by a radio interview with the singer-songwriter Moby. The occasion was the release of his album “destroyed”. (The lower case is his, not mine. And there were two interviews, actually: first on CBC’s Q, and shortly after on NPR’s Weekends on All Things Considered.)
He talked about his insomnia, and about writing the songs late at night in hotel rooms on the road: the loneliness, the dislocation, the feeling of unreality; and the strange familiarity of hotel room décor all over the world. And he also talked about his fascination with built places used in incongruous ways; of the feeling of places that should be full of people but have been emptied out. The image of the traffic lights is his. But it resonates with one of my own, since I can look out of my bedroom window and see something very similar: looking down on a series of autonomous street lights, clicking through their sequence all night long, oblivious to the presence or absence of people.
On re-reading, just now, I noticed the telling progression from town to city to metropolis. In the writing, this was simply an exigency of rhyme and meter. But in the reading, this seems to nicely reinforce the sense of dislocation and anonymity: the writer not knowing where he is, in this generic anyplace.
This poem was inspired by a radio interview with the singer-songwriter Moby. The occasion was the release of his album “destroyed”. (The lower case is his, not mine. And there were two interviews, actually: first on CBC’s Q, and shortly after on NPR’s Weekends on All Things Considered.)
He talked about his insomnia, and about writing the songs late at night in hotel rooms on the road: the loneliness, the dislocation, the feeling of unreality; and the strange familiarity of hotel room décor all over the world. And he also talked about his fascination with built places used in incongruous ways; of the feeling of places that should be full of people but have been emptied out. The image of the traffic lights is his. But it resonates with one of my own, since I can look out of my bedroom window and see something very similar: looking down on a series of autonomous street lights, clicking through their sequence all night long, oblivious to the presence or absence of people.
On re-reading, just now, I noticed the telling progression from town to city to metropolis. In the writing, this was simply an exigency of rhyme and meter. But in the reading, this seems to nicely reinforce the sense of dislocation and anonymity: the writer not knowing where he is, in this generic anyplace.
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