I've been told the streets in Torrenby
were laid by the Romans
while the locals were still being suppressed
by torch and knife and currency.
They never paved them with asphalt
as a tribute to the thousand year history of
civilization and progress and
the oil pearl inspiration
that glows on the corners of fitted stone
in the fog hilt hours of questioning night.
The church bells in Torrenby
were made by 20th century monks
who took vows of silence, but really
sought a new way of free speech
when the King's English failed them.
A clever bunch. Like living lines of poetry
they pursued many things
before reality caught up and
bombed the towers flat.
They're restorations. Good ones.
The canals though, they are genuine, but
to be perfectly clear
in ways the evening air is
so often not in Torrenby
it would not matter whose note it was
touching your ear or the heart's sound chamber inside;
if you sat on the stone wall along King's Bridge and
looked down at the spilled necklaces of moonlight
along the cobble stones. The words of
every love letter, every war hymn, every prayer and
every sweetly damned man to ever
feel their god desert or their love return
arm in arm with another
to the smudge, to the way point of Torrenby,
would come to your eyes like
stars spat across the sky
from the mouth of a freshwater whale
old and full up with enough of history's drifting life
to live a thousand years more
without taking another breath
and that is the worth of knowing
the feel of the rounded stone streets
against the soul and soles of restless feet.
