flit

The soaring buzzard with grey mirror underwings, -
the Bat-Signal surmounted
every megapol street and stone-cast lea in the ground-out basin;
gulls wicker
and a jackdaw hunches on a sloping roof.
The path pens heavy dour of a white shrub.

He has often witnessed those empty stairs and bannisters,
The stair-carpet with an indifferent stain,
above their heads a bulb without a shade, or socket without a bulb,
the entrance-hall marked with a big splodge of paper.

They are dead to us, (the corner children shout and the frilly borders nod and the office of fair trade confirms).
Dead to us;
long live the corn harvest and the Mahotella queens;
they are gone far away;
singing or dead maybe,
singing or dead.