For the backs that labour

Pushing up the weight of hopeless

Dreams

For the hands that grasp in misdirected desperation

For the streets that bleed

Memorial

to a million trodden, dusty, broken lives

For the reaching green

Sprouts of hope

Gnarled with time and pollution

Rooted in discarded filth

On shattered concrete

For that crusted soul

That watches glorious

Wheeling kites

In that forever cloudless

Expanse of sky

With vague, unattended longings

Akin to envy.