CRANES

CRANES

CRANES

Far above our heads their skeletal frames
are engaged in a serious enterprise
swinging their payloads of concrete and steel

through a blue where the future is rising,
glittering and sheer.
 
Just looking up makes you dizzy –
the scale of their disinterested purpose

as they lift our dreams clear of the world
with heart-breaking ease.
 
Imagine, then, waking at first light,
an east wind singing through the ribs,

the city you’ve lived all your life
spread out at your feet,

shrunk to the size of a child’s Lego bricks
from which, the manufacturers claim,
you can make anything, anything.