Under a Blood Red Sky

As I walked to the washroom just after five o'clock, I noticed the buildings outside were bathed in an unusual light. I turned around as soon as I stepped into the bathroom to grab my camera from my bag, as this is what I saw.


I took this shot through a window that was quite dirty on both sides, but it didn't turn out too bad. You can see the reflection of the overhead light in this next picture, though. The scene was really amazing, though - and the whole town was bathed in a red glow.


Down on the street, people walked around - kids with backpacks and moms rolling their babies along in their strollers. Middle school girls carrying books giggled with each other as they hurried up the road. Grandmas sat on the corner selling their vegetables. Not one of their faces turned toward the setting sun and the red sky over the mountains. Singing Angels should have been dispatched to grab hold of their attention for a few moments before the sky went dark. As I stood admiring the end of the day, one of my favourite poems popped into my head.

Musee des Beaux Arts - W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.