A Visitor's Guide to Coventry

(probably a poem but putting line breaks in is hard...)

Look up: they don't look up in this city any more.  Up there is where the trouble started, where the burning bones came from, the splinters of fire, the drownbreath of bereavement. But that was old when Death was a baby, and still they fear it, even their granddaughters don't look up.  Let's look up.  There's another city in the canopy, hotels of hope and brave tower blocks.  Aspirational Ikea.  Well, it is round here - this isn't Birmingham you know.  They pulled all the blue from the sky; we can see it every day now.  No need to look up.  But if you look up there are the spires.  See, the roads aren't the only way out of the city.  The saints are up there stained and waiting.  Air ghosts.  And peregrines, they lift tiny lives in pigeons to their exalted nest, like angels, like bombs.  Look up and there's a plaque for rude heroes and a towering Godiva.  Look up, an ancient and haunted kebab shop.  Look up: a space where an elephant once was.  Look up if you can, history holds down your eyes but still you can.  Look up.