Nightscapes - Part 1

Nightscapes ...inspired by 'Rhapsody On A Windy Night' by T.S. Eliot Late night summons madmen, madams, bold streetwalkers, picking pennies from the gutters as the merchants close their shutters and the homeless crouch in doorways in their rags, against the cold. Black or white, no compromise, no colours bathe the empty streets, as Bobbies tread their lonely beats, the watchmen rub their crusted eyes and settle into vigilance, no accident, no happenstance. Midnight passes. Leila in her bursting bodice lingers, guesses who I am and flaunts her body, all the same to her, a customer who'll pay for twenty minutes' satisfaction. Dressed in taffeta and lace, she'll never even see my face, night's sweet anonymity, the very definition of her name. Later, as the moonbeams shift, and cloudlines disappear and drift, come images in stark relief of twisted metal, broken things that catch the eye, suspend belief. Abandoned buildings, hollow-eyed and winking in a death mask grip, skeletal, once filled with pride, now empty, and for ever tongue-tied, cadavered, and condemned to drip. Still later, the street-lamp spots the cats a'creeping, worldly-wise, and rats along the quayside waiting, ready for the avalanche of waste into the yawning dumpsters. I have seen the children sneaking out before the dawn comes crawling, dirty little ragamuffins forced into leftover clothes, weepy-eyed and snotty-nosed, playing with a rotting carcass or a broken bicycle.