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what brings on the inarticulate howl of the city at night
the woman on the giant billboard who buys bigger and bigger houses but clings to the man with the cardboard hat and folded arms as he claims the wide western plains. the man reversing his car after midnight on his way to work, while the moon installs itself over the pine trees, the empty letter boxes, the silent streets lined up with waiting rubbish bins. those dreams that have been buried alive for years, that sometimes break out on certain faces in a moving train with frosted windows. the bats taking their place with the confetti of stars at dusk, as they arc over the pretty houses, past the perpendicular bow of the metal crane, leaning against the illuminations of the city skyline, while the poetry group sips anna’s sangria on the opulent balcony. the windscreen cleaners who come out late into the night to spruik at the intersection, their eyes searching for any hint of consent, asking if they can remove the scales from the eyes of your car, in order to thrill you with the true vision of the night. the small crowd spilling out of the theatre after yet another screening of les enfants du paradis where for the last three hours many were those who had come so close to giving substance to their own shadows. the saxophone player busking in the concrete passageway, in front of a hat with a few coins, after the crowds have left, not far from where droplets of water are falling from the tables with the upturned chairs, after they have been hosed down of all traces of the evening’s exuberance. the colours of the traffic lights and moving cars dissolving into a rough cocktail of quiverings in the night rain soaked bitumen. the cluster of trees festooned with little sotto voce lights, below the tall apartment building, while the lights in some of the windows (stars in their own right) keep counsel with those others above them in the heavens. the all night abundance of radiance in the front room of the funeral parlor, the gilded mirror, the chandeliers, the open curtains, everything on offer to the outside world, in a whiteness that never sleeps, exiled in the universe of the street. the voice of the military historian on late night radio insisting that a wall so high that even birds would not be able to fly over it, must be constructed in order to keep the two peoples apart. the fog spun since early evening, folding itself against faces of strangers waiting for the next taxi, reaching out for the crows on the wire, hunched in their blackness, obstinate with their stillness. the wind, hands loitering, holding down vagrant newspaper pages against the foot of the statue. night arguing with a fine rain.
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