The Death of the Human Situation

in a concrete maze of loneliness
lit by the neon light of midnight labour
(where one hundred thousand live next door,
and no-one is a neighbour,)
in a shattered window on the 50th floor
amongst the shadows of the office towers
above the endless rows of alienation
crouched alone the human situation
gazing out into the nightly hours
past the ever sleepless banking quarters
to the lost cities’ horizontal dream of happiness
that day in day out is seen in rags
seeking charity for dignity, and health, and fags.

it contemplated long about its pain
of which most of all it hurt to be
regarded as romantic ivory
and completing what the cities had begun
– as there was nothing left but to abide –
half numb, half willed, but knowing what it did,
reached out to that severed memory
leaning forward, to jump and fly and
spread itself among the city-people;
to fall towards its silent suicide.