Thousands of souls on the trays are displayed,
Low ones and heavy, thin ones, and black.
Someone was dining just yesterday, maybe,
Someone’s been starving for weeks in the rain.

Dead versus living, a hundred to one,

This city will never inflate or run.

Its map is a row of painted faces,

A gallery built on forgotten graces.

You are the currency, traded for gain,

Worth if your kindness was not in vain,

Worth if your father was wealthy and old,

(Or a great statesman with power untold),
Worth if your family broken in pain.

A soul is a tax,
It goes to the state,

To nourish the rest,
To seal their fate.

Some won’t be rescued, though others still choose:

“I’ll enter that city, whatever I loose .”