The cathedral bells,
Pulsing in the night,
Toll the day’s ending;
And the bats’ chorus
Hymn
Their squeaky vespers,
Sallying forth
To their hunting grounds.

The garbage vans steal
Down the dim-lit alleyway,
Absolving the tired city
Of the day’s waste,
While the sanitary waters mingle
In the subterranean tunnels
In ever swelling sewage flood,
Rushing, quietly rushing,
Lest the sleepers wake.

The unsaid prayers
Of the silent slumbering millions
Glide over the jungle of
Television aerials, suffused
With murk of industrial smog,
As the spiralling wispy smoke
From unfinished cigarette stubs
Rise as frankincense
On the unfinished altars
Of half-finished jobs.

The weary sleepers lay
Their broken bones
On the day’s tumbled despairs,
Resting their confused heads
On  pillows of the morrow’s sorrows.


And as the alley cats
Make noisy love
In the yellow light
Of the street lamps,
The children sleeplessly sleep,
Wishing silently,
Sadly wishing
That the cup of their heritage
Might pass away from them.

Chorus
What deity will take
The offering of our endeavours;
For pagan gods we slew,
And disown the god of the Jews.
Oh prophet prophesy for us.

Child’s voice
Observe the cigarette smoke
If it rises or falls!