a walk round the city

moving slowly
and cautiously
through
the dirty back
streets,
like an escaped
prisoner
on the run,
she holds up a perfumed
pomander to her
nose,
to ward off the
smell of
humanity;
foul and rank, she can
never get it out of her system.
she spies two old
men
one at either end of an
emaciated young
girl
dressed in
rags
little more than a
child.
one of the men
hears her and turns his
head
leering lustfully; with a
nod
he invites her to join them;
his face is
filthy and
covered in hideous
warts;
his tousled
hair
matted and dirty
hangs behind his
back
like some
dying horse's
tail:
Charon on steroids and
without the
deity.
she shakes her
head at
him
and
seeing the look of
hatred in his
lurid
eyes
red and
piercing,
the lashes
caked with
mucus,
she speeds up
slightly
hearing the grunted word
“bitch!”
behind her.
black rats
scurry around
her
feet
their yellow
teeth
like razors.
human waste
lies
in small
piles
on cracked
and stained
paving-
stones,
a microcosm of
Rome's seven
hills
where slavery
pays for
palaces.
down  a narrow
passageway she
goes
where many
doors
open onto
rough dwellings;
she pauses outside
each and looks
inside.
the first
a flop full of
folk
most of whom,
skeletal,
trail ragged
cloths like
feathers,
and starve
daily, the
glitterati looking
on
unconcerned.  
the next a
gin-house where
the dead lie in
heaps
pulling on wooden
pipes and imbibing strong
potions.
the third reveals
a world of
pain:
blood and
knives and
hate
as families prey
together
biting and
devouring one
another
in obedience to
God.
a fourth doorway
exposes
those who have
lost their
minds
their heads locked
inside iron
cages
while others look
on jeering. And a
fifth glows
with a green charnel-
light,wherein
children
work for bread
their bones malformed,
a twisted and
grotesque
progeny.
gibbering ghosts
accompany
all this
apocalyptic
as her mouth
opens
impossibly wide
swallowing all she
sees
as she screams

and screams

and screams

and screams

and screams...