David Kessel

Rain and Earth

Tears falling like rain

on the mean streets of London

red as workers’ blood.

Falling on the market street

on a labourer’s fierce decency

irrigating Oriental fruit and veg.

A city of degrading caricatures

and angry poverty in small back rooms.

Footfall of a troubled Bengali girl;

has to make her way to likely bondage

shattered on all fronts.

A cipher in a suit is the circus clown

blinded by illusion, the silence of blindness.

Miscegenation: tears of the cosmos.

A dosser waters the ground with schizophrenia.

The pain of the pavements and the wonder of the sky.