Lola Ridge turns skyscrapers into calm, distant figures that refuse to take sides or react to the life around them. They stand “remote, unpartisan,” meeting the sun with a cold stone finger, which makes them feel both dignified and a little eerie. The speaker claims to understand these buildings better than the police officers patrolling the streets below—officers she dismisses as “fat blue mullet,” a strange, almost comic image of clumsy authority. That contrast creates a cool, observant mood: the city’s real secrets seem to belong to its towering, silent structures rather than to the people who try to control it. The speaker feels a quiet kinship with the skyscrapers, admiring their aloofness and treating them as keepers of hidden knowledge.
Skyscrapers — Summary
Skyscrapers... remote, unpartisan... Turning neither to the right nor left Your imperturbable fronts.... Austerely greeting the sun With one chilly finger of stone.... I know your secrets... better than all the policemen like fat blue mullet along the avenues.