Blakeian in its subject, Whitmanesque in its rendering, this poem is a minor
masterpiece of associations, language that is appropriate for the subject
(using pus and snot in one poem and carrying it off is no small achievement).
 But you did it!  We become the child.  The stars become symbolic.  And
meanings ray out and out and out.  The theme is universal.  Powerful poem,
Arthur.

<<
 I am ten and, free of school,

 I clamber up the ragged paths above

 the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

 suppuration  of ten thousand chimneys,



 pus of that industrial wen,

 that slimes the lip of each pale child

 with slugs of snot;  encrusts our  sleeves

 and marks our lungs for later ills.



 I climb up to the high moors and scarp

 and see, with wonderment, the sky.



 So when I grope through smog filled

 ginells, entries, passages and ways;

 choke in the dense denial of light,

 confusion, bewilderment and fear;



 walk by the cut that creeps with oily stealth;

 hear  coughings in the dark

 stumbles , curses and appeals,

 while, hand on wall, I seek my road,



 I know that above the grimey shrouds

 night, with abandonment, casts a million stars.

  >>