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.
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