Winter morning.
This clear level light makes beautiful
all the brick-grey desert, the swirling banner
we bear of smoke, smoke of factories,
the factories themselves, washing shining
in narrow yards, the yards, even the narrow
houses, serried and stacked.
Not only in the eye of the beholder.
Beauty is more mysterious than that
struck by a trick of light from ugliness
even for one
for whom that ugliness holds nothing dear.
I remember
beauty just so shining from air to eye
across brimming waters of misery,
no less beautiful for that, more beautiful,
lending
a kind of sweetness to an undulled pang.