Around 1 a.m., after the last bus home,
the cities fill with those other victims
on whom the world fell--blade,
blow-torch, windpipe in some plumber's
strangling air-prohibiting hands.

All day they've lain
under the leaf-mould of busyness, with only
the pitiful newscaster to sing their requiem
and, at evening, a sudden
aria of headlines...

The last detective
has gone to rest, the last shy reader sipped
morbidity's nectar from the flowers of fact
(where the body was found, how clothed,
the screams everybody thought were on television,
the blood-trail, the signs of violent struggle...)

Awkwardly and with a halting motion
they move towards the fountain:
if they can only reach it they'll be free.

I do not know any of them
but recognize their footsteps as they pass, knowing,
if I looked up just once their faces
would harrow me forever, the girl who accepted the lift, the tortured
bookmaker, the pensioner burned to death by five boys...

They stand in the puddled light, their feet
swathed in newspapers, the fountain
bleeding heavily upwards.
My heart
sounds like feet,
like feet,
running

~ Bruce Dawe
"Condolences of the Season"

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