Open streets so ragged in their years,
The scent of culture and the fading time,
A waft of old books is ever overwhelmed
By the smell of fresh bread.
Or at least such tales in all their rhymes,
Ever cling to this city like musty spells,
It is becoming and so old, so sacred yet unclean,
The halls ascend in green and pale,
The gold to kiss the hallowed heads of many saints,
But there a turn and all is freshly new,
That man would clothe himself in splendour yet remain unchanged,
He is the same beneath unless so humbly touched.

A land of pastel bricks and verdant green,
The streets are wash with nonchalance,
Roads which seem so sparse and somehow thin,
From birdlike view like scalpels cut:
So roman through the hills and plains.

The sprawling city is in light and shadow,
Elevated pillars - pensive stonework,
Scar the valiant onslaught from the Sun,
Leaving pleasant trenches on the unturned tiles,
The heat of day at bay, though strangely sparse,
The people are elsewhere, and Hermes
Frozen in gold gives pause to his same quest and braves the heat.

Radiant streets are emerald at once,
The frailties stagnation left to thaw,
Its place the darling stone is clothed again,
High arches with cascade wisteria,
Your streets are full and radiant great ox,
A glory lent and spent that you would turn,
To your first love, your strength and founding light.

A little drizzle on the sandstone streets,
Stark amber yellow befriends a navy crease,
Pillars standing taciturn at its spurious spite,
Wade out of shadows, contemplate the span of night,
The noble faces of the streets in rows,
Grand titans dancing to the tunes of mortals here below,
Our history upon their weathered heads.
Our names are ever on them read.

So they shall sit to pass the time,
In thought that barely drips in rain,
To maybe light the newer day with our old lines,
To maybe crystallise our rushing joys and pains.

Returning to familiar spires,
The open streets and sandy stone,
Frame vibrant passings of long coats,
Which haven't seemed to ever pause,
But translate through the ages past.

Dark spires decend in shadows steeped,
Drawing near to kiss the head and turn,
With haste up to their lofty peaks,
To watch the deathly winter yearn,
To thrash beyond the sky as if to meet,
Imposing arches with primordial throes,
The ancient stones belie this forceful feat,
Old cracks amidst the sprouting new.

Express trip through a day,
Packed fuller than a fir tree's spine,
Concrete jungles to old oaken arches,
Making ways by solitary trees,
To finally find a place to sleep.

The bastion of these fleeting notes,
Man's autograph crusted in the mold,
Claws up in concrete limbs and cobbled scales,
To kiss the clouds and blue sky's cold,
To praise the trees for all their heights,
More fully praise the blacksmith old,
Of valleys low and churning lakes,
Of fluttered trees and high hills bold.

And suddenly, a sudden tree!
Placed grown and full just by the path,
In all its hefty trunk and sprawling roots,
Made homely with a band of friends,
Arrayed in summer outfits neatly greened,

A sudden tree in wilting soil,
Cut back for weeds and left to plead,
For something lively in the wake,
Of cold hard soil and hardly friends,
But now the path has found a pleasant pause in roaring streets.

Oh off beyond the countryside,
To concrete fields and glass meadows,
Then deeper into busy humanity,
Wearing different clothes and colours,
Wearing different eyes and noses,

Now hustle on into these sharpened trains,
In costume unfamiliar yet so nearly just the same,
Now bustle on into discomforting seats,
Share some words with perfect strangers,
Find they're rather neat in all their rich humanity,

Oh off beside the countryside,
For hours under clear blue skies,
For hours by oil painterly clouds,
That flow above lush life racing,
That frame the pretty flowers by the tracks,

Oh off beyond the countryside,
To battered train to olden shore,
Encamped each side by her majesty blue,
Here I glimpsed what I didn't know,
A place one dear to me has spent her days.

Three feathered of a kind,
Find purchase on a powerline,
A quiet elder to younger opined:

"The urbanisers made their nests,
Of shiny things and smoothest rocks,
To call us measly lowly pests,
But many kind do share their bricks."

Now dither not the three ascend,
Onto the wind and distance rend,
From time and seam it back again,

"Come dear child and see the trees,
Here see powerlines and little suns,
Once lean now fills the space with green,
And interleaves the urban run."

Now dither not the three do land,
To muddy paths by fields so grand,
That come to find the face of forest pan.

"Learn to dance and scatter in the way,
To fly and hop by beauty at the meadow,
To frit about by busy creatures don't delay,
Come see the urbanisers and their shadows."

Sitting on the noonday bench,
Entrenched within the slope
Of failing wood and chipping paint,
The sky is clear yet spent,
Speckled with the fleeing clouds,
Or maybe they are seeded new,
The breeze is quick - the city scent
Is carried beneath the noonday blue.

Stacking pipes o scaffolding,
Old ridges propped round every turn,
Artistic rope hung round likes scarves,
To make a sorry sight just dapper.

Released unto the cityscape,
I am so small at large,
And join the bustle floating through,
If floating were my measured steps,
I am so small at large,
The clatter louder, louder still,
Through tunnels swallow space between,
I am so small at large,
And find a path through cityscapes,
To where I set to be.

Walking places less the same,
I mold the streets to memory frames,
And listen to the urban sprawl,
I've been here twice or not at all,
The air rolls over smoke filled streets,
That open wide in midday breeze,
And echo with my quickened steps.

Bold-faced buildings,
Austere in lines ubiquitous,
Bounded by the patchwork clouds,
You guide the pavements through their paths ordained,
Outposts for the greener courtyards strewn behind,
How compelling is your brick-laid outlook,
You care for function, purpose, design,
And do not care for flaunting dress,
Your hearths glow warmed instead,
Endowed with ornaments of purpose,
Placed by your builder so.

Sitting in the dust,
A bolt in hand,
Like gleaming lightning to the threaded hole it flies,
And I ratchet in an ordered rhyme,
With yellow compound coated thick,
I toil away on metal flesh,
What humble thing is this?
To work with hands so learned yet so soft,
To turn from hoovered floors and pretty screens,
Instead to dust and industrial grime,
And fasten something in the present.

Wisened streets,
Bigger than the concrete corners,
Sitting in the smaller lands,
No, not here,
Here all things small are larger still,
Dressed in fancy walls of glass,
Dressed in proper pillars tall,
Dressed in rushing people to and fro,
Dense with lively creatures swaying,
On its yellow-rimmed arteries racing,
And I dive into the bog,
Of flowing glass and metal streets,
Into the beeping cars onlooking,
And I travel through the yellow tubes,
And waltz along the wisened streets.

Three cranes loom in the sky,
Backs crooked - scheming,
They peer like kaijus from the heart of rolling cityscape,
And aloft they stand,
Watching busy creatures walk austere in shadows low,

And standing under metal skies,
Held together by rigid bars and pillars true,
The busy creatures step in tune with blaring horns,
That roll out from their metal frames,
That glide along the iron lines.

Sitting in the sunny grass,
And the urban sprawl lies sandwiched in my sight between,
The rolling hedges and the ocean line,
It frays the sky - its roots upended,
And holds its peace below the clouds,
Sharper than a razor's edge,
And laying here the grass imprinted,
My gaze procured in sunny fields.