Counting down the Days of ChristmasCandlemas is still a month away

The Things you see
Musikverein, an angel at the roofline, dressed,
and another one, well, not much


A Sunlit Chandelier
Walking by the entrance of the Hotel Imperial
and wondering what really made the cut glass sparkle


The Sky reflected in the Windows
And, caught within, the golden Viennese winter light

Aren’t we enlarged
by the scale of what we’re able
to desire? Everything,
the choir insists,

might flame;
inside these wrappings
burns another, brighter life,
quickened, now,

by song: hear how
it cascades, in overlapping,
lapidary waves of praise? Still time.
Still time to change.

Mark Doty, Messiah
Sweet Machine: Poems, HarperCollins Publishers, 1998

Photographed 23 December 2015
Images © by Merisi