Lines for an Exit

Nobody saw him leave
He was just one grey shadow,
Falling behind a larger crowd
His only fleeting notoriety;
Came from thirty seconds falling
It passed without being noticed
How his dreams slipped west
Becoming phantoms of his own exclusion,
Howling through too long nights

When they had removed
The rubble of human defeat,
Indifferent traffic continued moving,
While the same faces looked down,
Smiling from magazine racks
And in houses made for two
Quiet lives went blissfully on,
Sacred in their ignorance
Of one world ceasing to turn