Fading Glitter

The fading remnants of day
Glitter on the horizon
Skyline silhouette under a golden sky
Beyond the great western harbour

I came here
Enthralled
Thirty-five years ago
Wide-eyed country boy

Glass and steel
In perfect lines
Rose above
The waters tread by commerce

The vast machine
Erecting towers
Trading commodities
Building economies

I could sit for hours
Admire the activities of humanity
Like the turning of the stars
Already twinkling in darkening sky

A vast universe
Of clockwork grace
The divinity of human hands
Creating our world from nothing

I saw the beauty
All of the beauty
Of what we wrought
Through the power of wanting

…and selling

Today I sit again
On this pier, thinking
Considering
The glitter of just one boat

And the helicopter
Resting on the pad
To whisk its owner
On some personal mission

We are
You and I
The stars of the galaxy
Circling around

The black hole at our center
Commanding our activity
Drawing us ever so slowly in
To our own oblivion

The black hole
Which appears to me now
As the silhouette
Of a boat tied to a pier

At the center of the universe

Where just a few of us
Acquire the resources
For their own personal means
Which could feed billions of us

The city
My beautiful city
Our beautiful city
Is not for us

The city is for them
We’ve built the engine
Which enriches them
And drains from us

Housing prices soar
Wages fall
Benefits diminish
Social nets dismantled

It is beautiful, still, our city
Exquisite and glorious
But less and less is it ours
And more and more is it theirs

All made plain
By one massive yacht
With a helicopter
Resting idly by the public market

The skyline glitter fades
Turns to dusk
The long night ensues
With hope for a new day