Alexander Etheridge

—after Tom Waits

In that deep uncanny

world, dark blue clouds

ride low,

raining all night—

The crowded metropolis

is long hushed.

Everyone there is

an orphan leaving behind

their opulent palaces.

They’re all out

on the stormy streets, roving

and wordless.

Black ivy

grows over empty chapels

where crows fly in

through broken stained glass,

nesting in the high

rafters. Hooded figures kneel

in flooding gutters,

with their snakes

and torn prayer books.

And flowers never seen before

grow up through

cracked concrete

in ruins of the great

city

where every sound

but the rain

is extinct.