The anthology also complicates nostalgia through irony. Images that seem romantic—café terraces, classical silhouettes—are undercut by concrete urban detail: “tagged pediments,” “overflowing gutters.” Such juxtapositions prevent a simple pastoral reading and insist the city’s vitality includes its grime. Ultimately, memory is neither preservative nor corrosive alone; it is an active agent that negotiates identity. By making memory material—sonic, tactile, and architectural—the poems argue that the city’s meaning is continually remade by those who remember it.