A New Home in the Sky - Remembering

Today we decided, as Klueless was behaving itself tolerably well, that we would make an effort to perform a proper act of remembering at 11 o'clock and not just sit slack-jawed at our desks for two minutes.

So, with the wind blustering and the rain falling, we adjourned to the Cathedral Suite.  Spare Change Guy greeted us from his usual place in the underpass, a giant puddle creeping gradually nearer to him as the rain fell. It will be interesting to see if he will keep to the same spot as the winter weather cuts in.

Quite a few people were in the Cathedral Suite before us, although most of them seemed to be there as tourists, and there were some students at one end doing some kind of performance art thing - or so it looked to us.  They were quite noisy and we hoped they would quiet down in time for the two minutes' silence.

They did.

And then it was like this:

The eleven O’Clock bells chime

And down from the leaden sky

The silence drifts like a blanket.

We stand bareheaded under the grey.

Strangers all, come together here

Among the ruins, to remember.

We look skyward unseeing, or shoe-ward,

While the November wind and rain

Go about their business, unconcerned.

A silver ribbon of music

Unwinds from a bugle’s mouth

And goes floating on the sodden air.

In this roofless ruin

The high clear notes echo round

Touching here stone, here wood, here heart.

Then the city stretches and stirs, waking.

The silence is rolled up

And put away for another year.