This city has no bicycle bells.

The children of this city talk to their parents: ring ring.
Acquaintances are neighbours while friends roam on the Net
and fall off when the wires are dog-tripped. Then it¹s all a black

fog screening over the next few days when the computer
is hijacked and the sun is blamed for its peephole performance.
The black jelly skirmishes on the moon¹s full face

nobody notices. Unlike everywhere else dusk is brighter
than morning and it¹s Diwali marooned out
in a sea of cubical lighthouses, each flat and house fat

with the echoes of tv. The fathers of this city are slightly
taller than the mothers of this city, who father the sons and
daughters of this city as almost equals; no witchhunt and not
                                                                                       many

women who like to wear their hair short. Fitness is diet and diet is
as diverse as the foods of four races but the champion has long
                                                                                       been
wealth. Stored in provident funds, in stocks and bonds, or realised

into the bricks of less humble roofs whose owners fumble
the keys to garages, safes, iceboxes and bedtime stories of
success. Here everyone knows education is a thing of beauty
                                                             but as a child who

learned to pray, worship, economise, share, hope, expect
                                                     and analyse, always a day
before yesterday ­ what can I possibly say to an adult who cannot
believe how few things I accomplished today

one of which is this idea I know my part.

It is night and I am still full of words.