A distraction
Martin Alexander - UK

We were swaying on a precipice
at the summit of a spire
and gazed as spot-lit buildings
sent into the night
blind shafts of silver light.

Those thin, bright fingers
threw the city’s power out
and strained in vain to touch the universe –
but failing, faded high above the towers.

The city’s jealous lights blacked out
the scattered constellations of the night;
gave us instead our city’s humming
galaxy of man-made stars to marvel at –
our inverted, tiny, artificial heaven
spread out far below us on the dirty ground.

Then something sudden: unexpected, white, high up.
A perilous instant – only half believed, neither grasped
nor comprehended before it disappeared
across the angled corner of the tower.

We waited, looking past
the reassurance of the polished glass,
half afraid and willing it
to reappear.

An interminable pause: then
two hundred feet above
a dozen bright white craft appeared
and slid along the building’s highest edge.

They floated steadily across the empty night
like sheets of paper blown in from the north.

Another cluster followed and someone said, 'They're UFOs!'
but all at once I knew that they were something else.
Probing fingers
pointed blindly at the sky
had struck a flight of birds
as they were heading south.

I wondered what they felt as they looked down
on all our blinding night-time suns –
bright sightless eyes from Earth that picked them out
and made them – white and featureless –
aliens to us against the blackness of the sky.

As we looked up, confused, delighted, out of joint
it seemed not aliens but angels had been sent
to show that though our city could blank out the stars,
only angels – impossible angels – could turn our eyes away
and up
to gaze enraptured at that fragile wonder in the dark
and make our splendid city disappear.