"In this place where the sound of sirens never ceases
and people move like a ghostly traffic from home to work and home
and the poor in their tenements speak to their gods
and the rich do not hear them, every sound is merged,
this moonlit night, into a distant humming, as if
the city, finally, were singing itself to sleep."
from Night Piece (after Dickens) by Mark Strand, Charlie Haden CD, "Night and the City" |
