Most buildings improve as they lose
their blueprint finish, weather off
architect too-sharp plans.
Some wear layered flaked paint,
for shuttered quaint takes, while carved seats
bottom out smooth. When an engraver’s cut
blurs into brass, it surely gains
from handled warmth, but this grey
braves a Europe-wide boulevard, all
pocked out, holed and whole
with the guts of wronged men
who rose on Easter Day.
Beth McDonough’s poetry appears in Agenda, Antiphon and elsewhere; she reviews in DURA. Her pamphlet Handfast (2016, with Ruth Aylett) explores family experiences – Aylett’s of dementia and McDonough’s of autism.
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