Great Northern Diver
Mancunia at night looks like embers from above,
but hold the dive and it reassembles, cools,
coalesces into districts, flyovers, a motherboard,
now stadiums like unblinking eyes,
car lots set out as piano keys, parks with lake wounds,
counter-flow of arteries in red and white,
the bass clef curves of cul de sacs
in outlying estates, then factories with starting guns
of smoke that sting and make you squint,
now you can pick out individual cars, nags’ heads
down in dark fields, glow of dressed shop windows,
drunks on their tightrope walk home,
black poplars’ ragged tops, roof tiles, kerbstones,
air that drops from ice to cloud to everything a city
cooks at once until the road meets you
face-to-face, down and under, slower, denser
and the clay arrests you, holds you as a pulse for good,
so what keeps this city alive is you.