belfast

The planes fly so low over the houses in the east their undercarriages seem like the stomachs of giant birds; the skyline in town is the ragged, monitored heartbeat of a difficult patient; the river holds its own, and for every torn-up billboard and sick-eating pigeon and execrable litter-blown...

The sky is a washed-out theatre backcloth behind new façades on old baths and gasworks; downtown, under the green sails of their scaffolding, a dozen buildings' tops steer over the skyline. Belfast is finished and Belfast is under construction. What was mixed grills and whiskeys (cultureless...