Candlelight

We lit a candle for you
that day in Sacre  Coeur,
under its white-flame dome
as high as Paris could go
and still be Paris, stood there
awhile as the dark fire
caught, aspiring to spirit,
then turned as the dusk church rang
with candles, remembering
beers and salades gourmand
in the streets by the Sorbonne
held by a small fountain of light
that became the pole star
for this blank page, and which
as far as I know burns still
as high as Paris can go,
and Sacre Coeur, escaping
like you the prison of shape
through this small portal, glows white.

Seán Street’s latest is Running Out of Time (Shoestring Press, 2024). Prose includes works on Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Dymock Poets, as well as a number of studies of sound poetics, the latest of which, Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong was published by Bloomsbury, (paperback edition in May, 2025.) Previous prose includes The Poetry of Radio, The Memory of Sound and The Sound of a Room, published by Routledge. He has worked in audio production for more than 50 years and lives in Liverpool. He is emeritus professor at Bournemouth University.