City Tops, Look Up.

A collage and a poem.

City Tops (2024), David Donoghue, Digital Collage.

Look Up

That space between the stones 
Where the filling hardened, holds
The pavement intact and he, 
Going about it like the hammer jack, 
Lets loose the slap of flat soles 
And heel clacks thumping 
The business of the day. 

“But look up” he’d say, “it’s above your head.”

In the canopy where the city’s sound 
Is fractured and trounced about 
And bounced around the shapes 
And lines and ornaments in slow decline,
Where creeping urban grime abounds.

The corner’s edge, the arch’s soffit. 
The steel and concrete stacks of profit,
Spite the toil of ancient spires,
Hosts gull and pidgeon flocks that paint 
Their plans expired upon the domes 
And balustrades and chipping slate, 

And chimney pots choked and stopped 
Like the gilded clocks or the copper tops, 
Coked and spotted, or the painted sash 
All rotted, where the glass has thinned, 
Blotting a bokeh view from his living room, 
Frigid and damp, up above the avenue.

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