The glare before the Jesmond flyover
gets cut off by the concrete as I drive
into a kind of temple listening
to Josquin's Missa 'Pange lingua', past
unfluted columns and the flanking slopes
that beam a lime tone through the slim young trees.

Their stunted canopies are hidden by
this slabbed and sodium-lit darkness where
that stir of voices, first heard in Ferrara
in the sixteenth century, is brushed
by quiet crackles like a censer's swish.

We all rush in and no-one wants to linger -
pause in neutral genuflection at
the bollard, or just speed through the ritual:
look signal and maneouvre. Then we try
to leave but jam into the exit lanes
emerging from the shade.

                                        The curving lip
of the ascending ramp has crumbled so
a constant drip of water can be caught
in the sunlight. We see it and we don't.