on a boat and through the bay . At night , Liverpool ’ s brightest stars are mere street signs , graffiti upon a crumbling wall . They can be repainted , glorified in shrines of yellow submarines and football shirts , but they cannot compare . They are facsimile and wafting away . ‘ Youth was born to die in Liverpool ’ ( Lowry 1998 p 4 ) and it ’ s glow has expired too . The shadows of poets , clustering in a burnedout husk , sing of the ‘ wholly pleasant approach ’ ( Scott 1907 p 129-30 ) of Abercromby Square or the ‘ green tarnished copper ’ ( Tessimond 1993 p 1 ) of Liverpool ’ s roofs , but they ring wrong . Tessimond found beauty even in ‘ a black , untidy rose ’ ( Tessimon 1993 p 4 ) of smoke , cloying against the tongue . Liverpool sucks at the throat , hacking and dragging . It has a mesmerising presence , compelling many to ‘ walk its sandstone pavements […] drink it all in . Memorise it ’ ( Young 2020 p 9 ) despite the memory being all but scrubbed away .
The Mersey washes the banks of the docks , rain drips from the rooftops and into the road below . Water continues to fall . The lingering starlight has since dwindled , but the buildings are beginning to be rebuilt . ‘ This daughter of Merseyside / with a passion that burns like fire ’ ( Tafari 2001 p38-39 ) comes again , its steel straws and liquid insulation rising like spring shoots . Climb Mount Pleasant and look upon the dropping city . See the spires still high and ambitious . People — new faces and new accents — flock to the streets . They call out and offer a hand , winking with wit as the taxis come on by . Traffic fills and swells . Jaywalkers shake
ENGL102 their fists and roll their eyes . Somehow , the city breathes despite its collapsed lungs .
Here , amid the ‘ city of arrivals , departures , of comings and goings ’ ( Simpson 2001 p1- 2 ), one cannot be rid of the movement . Here , in this postage stamp of space I occupy , life makes such a din . Lights flash and voices flutter along the howling breeze . Marvel at the life that comes rising to one ’ s feet . From all my short years of moving , I can see the uniqueness of Liverpool . Perhaps it is not a city in which I shall stay but it never was a city of staying put . Ships moved like doves amid waters filled with ichor . Trains rolled in and out , carting off countless characters . Even the footfall comes and goes like the ebbing of a tide . As tarnished with red paint as this city is , it still shines .
A droplet of rain runs down a window . It slips down into the road and is never seen again . The rain of Liverpool may pool for a time , enjoyment coming from the splashes and the slips it creates , but then it dries . No one morns it for another comes . For Liverpool , ‘ whose main street is the ocean ’ ( Lowry 2012 p 226 ), it shall always rain . One may stand and wait for the rain to drench them and reveal the wonderful sight of a sighing city in mist , shimmering .
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