Pick a point of view.
Choose an unexpected narrator who might see this same cityscape:

• A streetlamp just being lit

• The lonely cab-horse

• A leaf blowing through the gutter

• The person lighting the lamps

• Even the “smell of steaks in passageways” given a voice!

Write a short monologue or poem (2 lines) from that perspective.

• How does this narrator experience the evening?

• What do they notice that Eliot’s speaker might not?

• What emotions do they feel as the lamps are lit?

Read it aloud and see if it feels like it could belong inside Preludes — that same mix of grime, melancholy, and beauty.