Shadow Song

With less than five and twenty winters,

sheep herded through the blood dark years,

to chequered floors in London flats,

the war formed children sat in mews,

bemused on sofas by atomic fears:

slyly amused by sneering Frost,

sniping nightly from Shepherd's Bush,

they thought their luck had come at last.

Hallowed edifices still stood tall,

basking in the smog filled air,

not suspecting that the winds of change

would soon sandblast their dirty hair.

Sweltering in the sardine tube,

thrusting through the teeming throng,

the young and weak were soon delivered

into the arms of the hard and strong.

Driven by desire and necessity,

the half open buds sweetly entwined,

each spindly thread of destiny,

drab grey dross or rainbow tress,

defied the scum lined tidal flow

to weave the city's tawdry dress,

and paint the garish daub we knew,

as London, swinging high or low.

Only sad memories remain a part

of who they were and what transpired,

in some dark stairway or untidy room,

in the gloom of buildings, now torn down,

where each crazed tear or love soaked stain,

sang with pain and joy a weary song,

casting faint shadows from days long gone,

within a now tired and lonely heart.