Death of a Bird in the City

(for Philip Jones Griffiths and his photographs)

Guns are bombarding Piccadilly
Firing at ten million splattered white dying birds

Doors thrown open
Girls mouths screaming
The last unbearable white bird
Spotlit, slowly struggling threshing against blackness
Crucified on the easel
SCHWEPPES
GUINNESS IS ...
The lights are going out ...
A blind old woman with light running from her glasses
Seeing nothing.
The plaster Christ has got up and is kneeling before the plaster donkey

Buildings are falling silently
Neonsigns are running like blood
The COCA-COLA sun is setting
The plaster Mary following the star
B.P.          MAXFACTOR
To where the Three Kings lay
The last bird has leapt weeping
Onto the neon wheel
Delicious
REFRESHING
Screaming through the echoing ruins of Piccadilly
Under the bombardment of the night.

from Selected and Unpublished, Poems 1965-2000. Published by Liverpool University Press 2007.