II of Wands

Back in Croydon again. Only there are no saints anymore. There are only sag-breasted harlots, flocking to the chainstores on the high street.
They undress themselves in the dark. Present their nakedness to me on threadbare sofas, and I sob. The young men are all gone, the young girls are all gone, along with flowers and soldiers; only tombstones remain.
I am fucked ceaselessly by ageing women. I am reversing the drop in the Croydon birth rate single-handed.
The war thunders on. At night I listen to the owls hooting in the abandoned tenements. The young and the poor are dying, fighting in a pointless war. I can hear the trickle of water from the tap I can’t turn off; the plumbers are bleeding on a foreign shore.
We are too sickly to fight, for now.
It won’t be long. The bugles will draw us, weak, useless, from sad shires, and the war will thunder on. The earth is cleansing herself; mankind will wipe itself out and the rotting dead will refresh the soil. Croydon will perish, along with civilisation. Praise God Jesus. Praise the Lord.