What is the difference between twilight and dusk, we wonder.

Dusk is the darker stage of twilight; dusk is semidarkness, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and the example given is the dusk of an Istanbul nightclub. Dusk is also to grow dark, so that he saw the lights ablaze in the dusking sky;

while twilight is that period between daylight and darkness; an obscure time, which could be confused with slow decline, if we lean progressivist, if we want to force our lives into linear shapes, like black eels following a narrow black river toward the blue-black sea.

Instead we sip beers in Hoxton Square as it dusks above us after a perfect day, by which I remember via a catalogue of sensual delights, all specific to the time and place, East London on a Sunday, on the second-to-last day of May, just before the cuckoo changes its tune for June.

Perfumed sunshine in the flower market. Fried prawns in tiny white cups. The crackle of plastic wrapped around vintage books. A whole braised fish. And the light-dappled trees outside Jeremy and Jamie's flat windows and the voices of his loved ones from 5,000 miles away.

We watch the lights in the White Cube blaze awake as dusk, the darker stage of twilight, slips into a neon-threaded night.

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