THE CITY STREETS II

The city streets lie black, silent and without mercy. It is the way they have always been, for countless generations. People came and went, and their lives passed by. Once they were babes, now they are elderly and dying, and all their lives they lived in the cruel, cold city.

The streets are cool and windy, and smell of burnt fuel and decay. The buildings rise high above sight, seemingly unto the very sky itself. Grey and dark blocks of granite gathered for the harvest. The souls of countless people mill endlessly between the buildings and the streets. The city is alive with them; it alive with a soul of its own.

Car horns honk, and very occasionally one might hear the screech of brakes on a nearby corner. Coloured lights on the corners of each street direct the people and traffic; like guiding sentinels. They flash, and the people and traffic flow according to their signal. During the long, hot days the city hums and drones with noise.

Late at night the city quietens down, but the flow of movement never quite stops. Still the cars drive by, but fewer now, and quieter. A car full of drunken party-goers races by noisily down the main street. Here and there across the dark streets, a police car is out on patrol. Now, most of the people sleep, but tomorrow they will work again and awake the giant city to life.

A red sun bursts through thin grey-blue clouds on the horizon. Its rays creep to every darkened corner of the city, and stabs the pain to life. The engines start up one by one, and gradually brings the roaring monster to life once more. Out in a quiet public park, a lonely dove sits in a tree and sings.

The wind blows a page of an old newspaper down the gutter like tumbleweed. The cries of newsboys sounds like song on the street-corners, as the morning traffic slowly starts to build up. The sleeping city comes life once more...