I limp this slow september town, <br />one of the springtime herds left over; <br />the quarries up above gape down <br />and, somewhere down below, the river <br />trips over slimy rocks and falls <br /> <br />lower. The time-infected park <br />gleams with old broken afternoons; <br />far off, the Masters of the Dark <br />dream slow and deadly war on Bins <br />and drifting smoke, and alley cats <br /> <br />in prose like porridge; off Crown Square <br />in Wetherspoons, unfriended day <br />sits down and settles, watches where <br />they go, the lonely passers-by <br />en route to somewhere of no great <br /> <br />importance through this cooling air <br />of old routines, who yet can bother <br />(for all the bawling) still to care <br />about the End, and one another, <br />in stubborn secrecy among <br /> <br />black jackboot infelicities <br />of bloody word and vengeful thought. <br />I walk up Lumsdale, where the trees <br />down millwalls, while experienced light <br />points out the Triumph of the Will <br /> <br />that spiteful toadies spool and spin, <br />is, weighed with gnats and dynosaurs, <br />a small, mean moment, toppling in <br />the black hole Time that needs no jaws, <br />forgotten, even as it starts - <br /> <br />just like this dogshit, these old tins, <br />this marketeered democracy. <br />Back to their bellowed bulletins <br />I march, head high, unserfishly, <br />but unpersuaded, unconsoled.<br /><br />tony rhys<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/autumn-2001/
