Crowding in

Chewing on the match sticks
Of lighted bigotry
Walking in the thatched brick
Houses of England's purgatory
Sailing in the solid towns
Whose markets all are empty
Winging like an emperor's crown
Over the mounted sentry
All along the pallisades
Of a time wrecked crew
Fighting off the attacking gulls
Whose scurvy cries once flew

All the penny whistle arcades
All the penniless parades
Where ruffians and one-time maids
Are taking turns on the chew

I follow an inspector
Who is returning from some space
With a fear detector, smeared all over
His face
Panic is his protector, it keeps
Him in the race
To follow the crowd from morning's
Cloud, through bustle of bodies embrace
And he pushes past the working girls,
Past the drunks, and the ladies in lace
And he brushes his coat tails with
The girl's of some disgrace
And at midday the streets are thronging,
The squares have a heaving grace
And palpitating shopper mingle
In and out of their place

He follows some inside a shop
Of candles, and grease and pastes
And oils smell, and tinctures quell
The crowd in its rabid pace

And the afternoon wears on
Along side market stalls
With meat, hanging cured, and cutting
Tools, and the parambulators ambling trace
The parasols beneath sun scholes that dapples
Over his face, and soon this market
Packs up shop, folds up tables
Closes stops and
He is left like a hairless dog
Yelping on the pavement
And the rain falls down in feathers,
That soon turn into heavier things
That fetter in the wetter arches, that
Nestle in the Spring
That trickle down shirt collars,
And coats that are pulled round close
And his search becomes more desperate
As the shoppers leave their posts
They rush indoors inthis street, so he
Wanders on through corridors
Of darkened ways and alleys
Broken by cats and aunt Sally's
And Salvation armiests appraise him
They accost and pull him in
This old man for whom the life blood
Seems to be drawing thin
But emerging again in another street
Where crowd is swelling still
He heaves his sigh of relief
And swims in for his fill
Is he a thief
I cannot tell
I see no sleight of hand
Unless he robs them of themselves
No wealth worth more to man
Is he a criminal intent on
Stalking blood or murder
When it comes to night will
His blood lust rise will
His victims fall foul of this herder
Yet he is not picking pockets,
Though others around him do
Though he is jostled,
He is bumped, he yet has hustled
From a burgeoning due
Like time and taste have drawn him
As if a deadline right on queue
Ever drawing nearer, never ending
He must pursue