|
Slum
Slum
Where hard looks and thin soup oppose,
the spider, cockroach, rat, and mouse dispute
in patient litigation or in border raids
our title to this world.
There is no mystery, it boils down to food.
Our ruined lunches providing theirs
as Roman baths provided stones
for abbeys of a different creed.
They too win converts. With earbite and cold fear,
patient, persistent, numerous,
their inquisitors huddle together in dim light
to study our disgust.
Greyly, brownly, blackly surpliced
they muse on our improbable millennium.
Copyright ©
Christopher Bowen
|