Northern City

Hand-woven from the Donegal wool of bog-soaked

sheep, your coat exudes its tailoring, yet we

wouldn’t know that blackberries and fuchsias have

coloured other refinements: this coat has its

gorse-and-moss dye toned to a muesli elegance, the

flecks as goosebumps of alabaster and mahogany.

Hands in pockets angled by the measure of protractors,

you could be Royal – how the sartorial cuts us out and

above others it would seem in all those looks by

people in these streets from this darker city. Poverty

wears its heart on cheaper materials. But at different

times, their painted faces and dressing up is another

aspiration to rise over the playing fields of greed,

like a coat over a hard life in its deceptive tweed.