Cavalry & Guards Club (Second Floor)

Day 58
16 Mar 11

Train, tube and foot and on my way to meetings in the city.
Past the sellers of the Big Issue and the saxophone player
crooning Sinatra in the Underground; those without pity
or cash, or both, walk past the beggars - the forgotten layers
of society - the poor, the unwashed, the forgotten.
And how does that happen? They were someone's brother
or son or Dad and now they are no-one much, with a dog
and the expectation of less than nothing; a bed of papers smother
the dreams of someone who has now ceased to be a cog
in the machine, but has become a source of friction.
And I go the Cavalry and Guards Club and climb the stairs
To where the other half live, and from whence they
congregate to fight wars from the comfort of their chairs;
Chesterfield Generals perhaps, but in their day
They fought horrors we only see in films.
Youth might be wasted on the young, but for some
its passing is greeted with a sense of relief,
that no more do they march to the distant drum
that for many tolled for losing, loss, and grief.