Norman Jope, Dave Migman
Dawn tram
Leaf-littered streets. The jerk of the dawn tram
as its doors jolt open, as tired and heavy bodies
climb aboard, straddled by gravity.
Days blink, nights clench in them, as if it might race
to a darkened depot where it would rust
with its skeleton crew, its crumbling passengers
and of course there’s no remedy, time dances
to the tune of death, which makes the sleep
of material wealth so tempting -
still more so, the lure of a perfumed garden
at the end of a pilgrimage where playgirls await
under orange and olive, but that’s a stop too far.
Instead, in transitional time, they doze
as the lights go on and off, as tenements snore
on their paint-peeled frieze, asleep in their dust
and the great black toad of the clock croaks five
as a bird falls into the tunnel of a cat’s eye
and the stalker places his head on the track
in a city of polyglot, accented doom,
sustained by coffee gulped from machines,
through which the dawn trams travel, balefully golden.
Page(s) 160
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