As Twilight Came to the Park
by Theodora Goss

There was a moment, as twilight came to the park,
when suddenly the lights turned on,
and the birds began to chatter and clatter as they do
just before dawn,

an inverted dawn, a dawn that brings the indigo
twilight falling fast,
and electric lights came on as they used to once,
in the gaslit past.

Then, carriages rolling down the street would bring
proud ladies in feathered hats
to sit on wooden benches beside threadbare
impoverished poets,

while strutting politicians would attempt to settle
important matters of state,
and shopgirls strolling together would linger, determined
to stay out late,

and in one corner, as disapproving nursemaids
watched children intently at play,
university students would argue about the urgent
questions of the day.

As twilight fell, their ghosts started moving along
the gavel paths, to and fro
in their outdated clothes, with their outdated gossip and news
from a century ago,

and I felt as though I sat, on that wooden bench,
at the fulcrum between a past
that was inaccessible and a future that seemed
uncertain at best,

while the ghosts passing to and fro offered no reassurance,
with their ancient loves and wars,
nor the birds, who had sung the same songs in twilights past,
nor the emerging stars.

(The image is A City Park by William Merritt Chase.)