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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CITY CRY, by                    
First Line: A bell, a horn
Last Line: How much I slaved lost in a dream!


A bell, a horn,
a long-drawn, rasping breath of sound.
The giant turns, restive on his luckless bed.
Racing commuters' cars make congestion in his lungs.
He resents the lifting lid
drawn relentlessly from his cyclopean-eye, -- his heart resists,
Knowing no joy, no sorrow, no pain,
Not even the solace of the hard, relentless,
grey and earth-drawn sky
that knows one life and death and love
in rain.

He lifts long, grumbling fingers up;
He shakes discontent and fear and hate
down all the empty streets
that echo any dark, stray footsteps
and the rattling garbage tins
when those of night seek sleep.

This they would have me starving share
Though the giant would not know or care,
How much I slaved lost in a dream!





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