In Broad Daylight

In the widest daylight
in certain parts of the city
the human element
completely disappears
there is only a vague sensation of man
a few cracked tyre tracks in the earth
the sound perhaps of an airplane overhead -

This city
is the solitary city
the silent city
where all the flurry of talk has dissolved
into the air
into the earth
where the denizens
are dispersed
subterranean,
into iron and steel,
behind brick walls,
insinuated
into the integument of the city -

The city, rid of its self,
has become something else.
It is still the city
only not bigger, not louder,
but quieter,
more alive -

Gradually,
the empty waste ground,
the weeds growing through the window,
the suddenly silent street,
in broad daylight,
smash the mind to pieces.

'Govan Road on a Quiet Summer's Evening'

For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and centrally and simply, without either dissection into science or digression into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is.

James Agee, In Praise of Famous Men

'Brand (New) Street'   August 2010