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