Splotches of colour
at each window
carelessly painted
and already running down…
Rain makes their outlines melt
from this side of the fuzzy glass.
Behind those ground glass,
once upon a time,
as in fairy-stories,
a new tune was sung
everynight, till the city
let its horns and bugles
kill and drown noise,
and they, behind those glass panes
forgot how to sing
and then, quickly
before a messiah could intervene,
music altogether.

And sometimes in June
when on a rainy evening
light from routine streetlamps
slides off
the rejuvenated, wet black city streets,
shapes I thought looked queerly like faces
broken-jawed and bleary eyed
peer from pot-holes.
Somebody, almost always,
too worldly to care,
splashes through them.
Some times I see them gather
the loose pieces and resurface
indifferent to the sound of the world,
or even the sights, the light,
staring blankly…
language lost.
Mostly they just float
in threads of molten colour,
like those behind the glass windows
till the sun has, by the next evening,
sucked them dry.