Lament for London

The once familiar streets of London are gone.

The uneven cobbles are gone,
The dirty trench coats are gone,
The stench of raw sewage is gone,
And all these things used to be hated all along.

Crushed by the bombs of the Iron Cross,
Cracked through the advance of the future,
Crumbled at the hands of time’s decay,
Lost are the narrow alleys once wandered through in the darling month of May.

Where small boys once picked my pockets,
Large boys now pick knives from theirs.
Where black, white, and brown once mixed like paint on a palette,
They now retreat sullenly into their separate lairs.

The once familiar works of London are gone.

Wharfs named Jamaica and Tobacco,
Carry the Empire’s goods to trade,
But the sailors and merchants were soon to fade.
Abandoned, desolate, and sunk to nothing as the Empire’s glory did dissipate.

How I miss the colourful and chaotic streets,
How I miss the openly disdainful elites,
How I miss the watch-seller with the top-hat and the strange Irish accent,
How I miss those cramped tombs built brick by broken brick,
And the working girls coated in coal and lye.

All of this is gone, and what are we left with now?

Leaders who pretend like they’re one of us,
At least before they didn’t hide behind smiles.
Houses which are now built upwards rather than across,
At least before we could just walk out the front door.

Overgrown steel giants blighting the horizon.
Cramped rat tunnels where sweat is the order of the day.
And what someone calls art, made out of twisted metal and plastic,
Oh isn’t modernism fantastic?