Night guns boom through halls and rooms
and boys asleep in secret beds
awake to girls with eyes alert,
while down the hall a quiet clock
attends the progress of the dark.
Then dawn brings on sudating light,
and streets awake with sounds and eyes
and restless minds and feet that stride
toward shops with rising rolls of steel.
But now a shower pounds the road,
and busses filled with restless throngs
roll down the streets past border guards,
enigmas for the coming day.
Caution leads the head and eye
and hidden menace stalks the street
among the cars parked overnight,
all lotteries for sudden death.
Yet even here the Avatar
speaks soft again the hallowed word,
and souls reach homeward on the bright
and spreading wings of hope.
