I saw her in the street

We were polite, random, neat.

Forgetting what drunkenness

Created in the way of becoming diabolical

Divine Tabula Rasa – blank slate.

 

Once one, kind, sweet woman,

Polished floors with rage

Arms red and fleshy –

The dark memory of her soul is not pale;

 

It was late, near the Spaniard’s Inn,

The full moon was shining,

With all the solemnity of a river in flood,

Sleeping London was dreaming of blood.

 

And among the houses, cats skid under cars,

A child-mother was on the watch for rapists,

She accompanied her child slowly into sleep.

 

Suddenly, breaking through the gizzard of sleep,

A pale light, like the light of heaven,

Awoke her from a world that does not vibrate

With tube trains,

 

The kettle was a fanfare of sterility

In the sparkling morning, the baby fed,

Making a plaintive noise and weirdly

She creates a skinny child, filthy and dark,

In a kitchen with no hot water or heat

Whose family would disappear her

Into a secret cellar. Sold and neat.

 

Unregistered angel, she screamed incessantly,

Nobody heard and nobody cared.

People’s looks were averted

What can you expect? Blank stares?

 

How hard it is to be beautiful if you’re born poor

It’s a job to stay alive. Never mind thrive

These crazy ponds under the moon made her swoon

With a great hunger for a different life.

 

These building are shards of glass

Cracked and moneyed

Only oblivion can return them to

Eternity!

 

As she grew older, she remembered

The reflection of the temptress moon in the pond in winter,

Silence and lassitude accompany her into

This foul whispered secret

In the confessional of her heart

Where shadows are not pale

And where there is no blank slate.