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Night Photograph
Night Photograph - Lavinia Greenlaw
If I write about anything in particular I write about how we see and how we try to see and this poem came out of a journey I made by ferry at night in which I thought there would be nothing to look at.
Night Photograph
Crossing the Channel at midnight in winter,
coastline develops as distance grows,
then simplifies to shadow, under-exposed.
Points of light – quayside, harbour wall,
the edge of the city –
sink as the surface of the night fills in.
Beyond the boat, the only interruption
is the choppy grey-white we leave behind us,
gone almost before it is gone from sight.
What cannot be pictured is the depth
with which the water moves against itself,
in such abstraction the eye can find
no break, direction or point of focus.
Clearer, and more possible than this,
is the circular horizon.
Sea and sky meet in suspension,
gradual familiar textures of black:
eel-skin, marble, smoke, oil –
made separate and apparent by the light
that pours from the sun onto the moon,
the constant white on which these unfixable
layers of darkness thicken and fade.
We are close to land, filtering through
shipping lanes and marker buoys
towards port and its addition of colour.
There is a slight realignment of the planets.
Day breaks at no particular moment.
From Night Photograph, (Faber & Faber, 1993), copyright Lavinia Greenlaw 1993, used by permission of the author and the publisher.