It was a day ago, a week, perhaps,

while strolling past a market stall,

there stepped out to the front of me,

a brazen looking boy,

who, in a strangely whispered voice,

did shyly ask my name,

and with his blue eyes locked on mine,

calmly blocked my way,

to ask me where I journeyed,

and what I had to say,

but while searching for the answers,

in thoughts so strange to me,

I heard an old and damning voice,

speak ghostly in my ear,

‘leave him and his sinning,

the dead have had their say,’

as somewhere in the distance,

old priests began to wail,

for gods long gone forever,

their wailing all in vain,

so on I went past whispers,

past shabby streets and shops,

past all the bourgeois hopes they sell,

wrapped up bleak despair,

and found myself on boulevards,

like a well-off, well-to-do;

but when the pocket’s empty,

desire’s a heavy chain,

so burdened, bitter, broken,

lost in lonely gloom,

I wandered sordid saddened streets,

until I saw a shadowed door,

in an alley, in a quarter,

where kings are still unknown,

on which in glowing letters gold,

were writ three words,

“the common right,’

that made me open wide the door,

to find within a place of light,

where Justice was by Peace embraced,

while Reason played guitar,

that truly seemed a world apart,

a world turned upside down,

and so I came to tell you,

a message old yet strong,

the door’s not locked, it’s open,

and we only have to dare,

to turn the world the right way up,

and bring the wrong way down.