A Ragged Truth

Which hearts go out to the city’s homeless?

ragged outcast bodies, scattered minds,

no warm bed or companion, nothing, nobody

to hear the silent complaints, the quiet aching lament;

just chattel put out to pasture by the unblinking herd

who mostly avert their eyes from uncomfortable tragedy.

The Crowd: refuge for those who’ve lost direction,

a colony of anonymous people,

a primal migration without purpose,

millions of invisible footsteps swallowed

by stoic slabs, concrete upon which

the ragged outcasts sit, exiles who escaped it

and now suffer its scorn, the smiles of secret antipathy,

one hand outstretched, the other on cardboard–

NEED FOOD, A BED, HELP, A KIND WORD –

empty cups and god bless yous, opium angels in doorways,

hermits of stone defiled, arms crossed with scars of perdition;

throatless prophets of a waning era,

threadbare holiness in a gutter of neglect,

death and life in a back alley shadow of night,

a city street the only final bedrock,

stone pillows and a temple of starlight.

These beings are the living, breathing

poetry of London and every city

and in their exile they understand

what we of the Crowd do not:

the ragged truth of these streets.

For Marty