The escalators carry one down into the stench
of slaughter long tiled over. Wristwatches,
lighters, pen-and-pencil sets
rest upon their leather pallets, a future pausing its brilliance
upon a plastic bier. No soul to look after them,
kiss away the dust that threatens their cogs, that dulls
the spin and snap by which their beauty is adjudicated.
A seeing-eye dog leads its charge from neon
into shadow, skinny girls clop past
on their break-a-leg platform shoes. The pedestrian
exit ramp is a catch-all of echoes
ending in hush. A hush of far older
angels than those adverted under glass, old as the
world, old as malice.