like a spire of steel and stone
stabbing the sky, this story
of the city slipping sweet
into the sinews of citizens,
this syrup of sound spelling out
ascents and sorrows,
strike down the scaremongers
selling sham stumbling blocks
and successes when the sincere
ones are suffocatingly
accessible nigh assured, send for
the soothsayers and charlatans,
the sons and sisters and siblings,
the spiritual psychopaths
and seers of visions, those
who surmount and those
who succumb, the sinners,
the signposts, the stained-glass
saints, the scuffling masses,
the gone astray, steady Yorketown,
site of so many songs.