In the film of the procession, the silhouettes
carry mattocks and spades. They push wheelbarrows
and broken bicycles. Some have lost limbs
and swing by on crutches. There are carts
loaded with furniture and a cart bearing a gallows.
There are miners and men in trench coats,
old women in long skirts, mothers with babes in arms.
In the end they bear whole buildings upon their backs;
they carry the city with them, and we may peer
through innumerable windows. A man is bound
to a chair. A couple is making love. A woman is
cooking dinner while her family sits at the table.
Then there is the soundtrack: an old hymn
or march sung as a wordless moan alternately
by a man and a child, accompanied by harmonium
or concertina.