Vanishing Point Poem by David Lewis Paget

I'd noticed the girl a dozen times
As she passed me on the street,
All I could see were those red-rimmed eyes
And that look of pure defeat,
So often I thought to stop her there
To ask her what was wrong,
But I lived in a part of the city where
Such weakness didn't belong.

We all sit huddled in high rise flats
And keep ourselves to ourselves,
We don't get involved with the neighbours,
Heaven forbid that we should be friends,
We eye each other suspiciously
On the dark and dingy street,
And try to walk in the shadows
So that our passing will be discreet.

But often I'd pass the local cop
As he put the posters up,
‘Does anyone know the whereabouts…'
But nobody even stopped,
So many faces on poles and posts
And the names they would annoint,
Of those who'd gone to the edge of the world,
Right through to the Vanishing Point!

I often wondered about them all,
Was it easier to escape?
Was life such a terrible martyrdom
In the hands of a fickle fate?
So many were lost with every year
Was it murder, mayhem or less,
How many husbands misplaced their wives
In an act of carelessness?

The girl intrigued me, every day
She would pass by the corner shop,
But I never saw her happy or gay
She'd the weight of the world on top,
She slowly became insubstantial, like
A wraith that was taking the air,
I followed her round from a distance
Watched her enter the Pearly Fair.

There were clowns and strange hobgoblins there,
And often a Harlequin,
They wandered around in a daze, it seemed
Like a circus about to begin,
And not one had an identity
Apart from the paint they wore,
A slight disguise in a world of lies
Said, ‘What did we come here for? '

The girl got changed for the Judy Show
Full size, and Punch was a man,
He beat her there with a wooden club
As the audience clapped their hands,
The ‘club' was really a cardboard roll
But it must have hurt like sin,
And Judy cried as the audience died,
‘I'm back in the world again! '

I followed her down to the waterside
At dusk, with its evil smell,
And others, still in their sad disguise
Were milling around, as well,
They warmed themselves by a brazier
And looked for a place to sleep,
But ‘Judy' stood by the empty dock
And the water there was deep.

My eyes played tricks in the dimming light
She started to fade away,
Became as one with the falling night
Where the lost and the beaten pray,
She was there one minute and gone the next
The movement was so adroit,
The water formed like a giant tear
Right there, at the Vanishing Point!