The speaker calls out to a stranger on a city street, a man whose face is set in a frown and whose eyes are fixed on the ground. The tone is casual and a little teasing, like someone nudging a passerby out of his own thoughts. The repeated "downtown" and the bouncy rhymes ("frown," "down," "around") mimic the rhythm of walking, so the lines seem to move with the city's beat.
The central question is simple: why look down when there is so much to see around you? The speaker points to the skyscrapers as the answer. They "live up to their name," and the image of them "scraping away the sky" with "glassy stairs" turns the buildings into something almost magical, reflective and climbing toward the clouds. The mood is playful but gently hopeful. The speaker seems to believe the city holds beauty that the man is missing, and that a simple change in where he looks might lift his mood.