City with a Stone Heart

Some cities have cold hearts, she said,
stone cold,
even in autumn,
when skies ripen with colour.

You walk, and you walk, and you cannot
quite believe how many hilly streets are
there, and
houses perched on the edges of cliffs,
above the sea.

You labour up and down those hills in the 
rain, in the wind, and 
some days you need to hold on to the street 
lamps or something not to be blown into the sea 
with your umbrella turned up-side-down and
your hat flying over the treetops.

You come upon the old tombstones at the
edge of your favourite garden, trees all 
ablaze now with red, gold and orange and
you remember walking there this last summer, 
smiling at the city beneath, still new and hopeful.

We will get to know each other yet;
in your galleries and museums 
where sombre paintings of old Māori hang
under the soft lights,
in tiny coffee houses nestled inside your
narrow alleys 
where black-suited people drink their lattes
and cappuccinos in a hurry,
in backstreet pubs and shabby theatres
where miscellaneous artists carefully 
cultivate an air of boredom and 
indifference.

You smile, and you smile until your face
hurts, 
but it never smiles back,
not once.