They Stoop

I see all the blocks: the fat ones, the tall ones, the
Many-windowed-ones - all familiar and obsequious
Staring from the skyline.  Cityscape rises in my eyes
As contempt slaps thought down flat as pavements.

This empty city echoes to sounds of cardoors, shouts and bells.  
Its noise sticks one's surface like a chisel, scrapes the paint, pierces
The internal plaster, roughcasts all smoothness no matter how
Carefully applied.  Scenery's pleasantness is an anterior breeze

Breathed through grass and laburnum trees, here just fades to bad. 
Pulled up by my bootstraps, by the requirement to walk on kerbs,
On right-angled paths, I am hewn back to lath to no avail.
Dirtpiles and hard high walls stoop overhead, bricking my space

Render me derelict as a building full of rubblepiles and broken glass.
This place knows how to rust the soul, cause machinery to stiffen,
Seize for good.  All is fierce here: too cold a camoflage is
desire and greed, animalistic with the whiff of money.  And the buildings 

Stoop deliberately, Know how to make a human feel small 
By stunting his stance till he resembles a boulder, 
Forgets how to walk tall, one single individual, 
An accretion of genes more vital than a mere crowd's limb.

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