A Brisk Winter Evening

The train rambles overhead,
Passing, obtusely, below:
The beggar,
So envenomed by the cold that he can barely raise his voice
Across the narrow footpath bridge to entreat a cigarette,
The suited man walks on,
Christmas bonus on his mind,
Distracting him from the less fortunate and kind.
The youth scatter themselves along wide lanes, absorbing some atmosphere,
Only because it's there.
Disconcerted lovers argue in silence:
They sit: she cries
'I refuse to even..'
He looks on the jolly crowds,
Sat on that shadow suffused bench
Waiting quietly for her to come around.
Oh and this is London,
as the looming clock chimes the dooming sound of seven
as the middle-aged middle class will still be complaining,
and the rest of us are vaguely happy just because it's not raining.

A man and his mother;
'I can't believe tomorrow is Tuesday'
Punctuates some synonym for silence,
One is received rather rudely by his now separated subjects
Now falling short of violence.
Still a stream of patronage along the mournful river
Fancying Greek, French, or Turkish, or tourism,
Wanting everything in sight and buying nothing at all,.
And so still the train carries on its course,
As surely as the carousel spins and spin spins,
They kiss and continue their briefly broken path --
Still the wind strikes the bridge with its terrible wrath.

That's over now,
And how tremendous (as usual)
The warm lights of the inn, music and blaspheming,
Now it starts again with the birds and the sibilant din of the generators,
There's something precarious in the early morning air,
It starts with rain, but the workers carry on
Sweeping themselves informally to their destination again
My eyes tell me to sleep but that's the only thing
Soon, morning bells, innumerable dwellings come alive
Life and life itself in motion
A sleeping body quivers on the bed
'We're back here again?'
So soon the cycle spins round again and
the sky paints itself back again;
Let's sleep, then.