They clawed their way out of the ground.
Risen and towering, presiding over the destruction
of crushed tradition, they razed to dust a distant memory
under glinting neon triple thick glazing.
Cast into shadow
the city recoiled into cold autumn.
Leaves turned brown in Spring
winds found new crack to their whip.
These sons of Mammon stood leering
over the Circus, over the brown fields and over the brick arches
they’d left standing as a counterfeit piety;
fabricated alms for the altar of their father.
At their feet crawled the colonies
they’d displaced. Misplaced sentiment
in thrall to the gigantism of growth,
turned only at the last, once it was too late.
Heavy they were laden, dodging
the crushing sweep of their new potentate.
Too heavy, it seemed, for piece by brick
were they dismantling their foe.
The Sons looked wide, picking debris from their teeth,
surveying the spoils with their chins held high.
Not once did they see the resistance below,
until all at once, their foundations shook, and they fell.
Once eye to eye with the swarms of furies,
with sunshine bursting its dams and flooding back,
they saw the frenzy, it’s savagery rampant upon them,
as their dominion reclaimed itself.
#SaveShoreditch and oppose the #BishopsgateGoodsyard development. Sign the Mayor of Hackney’s petition here and tell Boris Johnson and his friends from Hammerson that East London’s heritage isn’t for sale.
Book of Pye 