The War of the Worlds

They do not land to talk. A cylinder on a Surrey common. A heat-ray that turns a crowd into a lesson. Then the machines walk, the artillery fails, and London — sure it was the centre of the earth — learns what a colony feels like from the other end. A brother in the city. A narrator in the lanes. Smoke. Red weed. No treaty. This is the invasion that taught the sky to hunt. Draw the curtains. It will not help.