Some straight as arrows flight on a still day.
Others curve serpentine upon themselves,
celtic knotting such a twisted topology
that he can never be certain he has again
returned to the place where he began.
Some barely shoulder wide,
even sideways turning.
Others great avenues,
broad and endless,
whereon all the armies that ever were
might pass on revue,
eternally
on their way,
on their way,
unquestioning,
to whatever doom awaits them.
There are roads which climb hills
Escher like, that have no summit.
Endless they spiral,
with no beginning
and no end.
He has walked them slowly
many nights, until dawn waking
set him free,
back to the daylit world
of beginnings,
and endings.
There are the avenues
of once great houses,
Victorian, Edwardian. Elaborate.
Gaudy painted ladies,
shingled walls,
and slated roofs
now fallen into disarray.
Age stained, mildew gray.
Tall vacant windows, rotted curtains,
face empty streets, where no one walks,
save him.
Of some streets,
he seems to remember,
he seems to remember,
ghosts of trees.
Stark bare branched
Stark bare branched
unleafed, fingers dead reach upward,
deep rooted in soil which has never
known life.
Nor sun.
Nor rain.
Unbarked like the failing elms
he knew as a child
walking the streets
of the waking world,
of the waking world,
before some strange disease
had girdled them unseen,
left them standing
to slowly die.
There are no living colors there.
It is a place of brown and grey,
faded red ancient brick,
Dull yellow, grey rose.
Colors of things
left too long in a sun
that has never shone.
the faded, grayed, unliving colors,
of stillness, of silence, of waiting, of death.
Then one night he awoke
to find himself standing,
upon
The Street of Books.
It is wide,
The Street of Books.
running die straight
between tall embankments
of dark green grass rising.
from the granite curbed street.
To each house
a granite stair
iron railed,
flights upward
to a great, dark, six panel door.
Iron hinged and iron latched.
which stands closed
in the center
of the heavy buildings.
some of stone.
some of brick.
The Street of Books
is lit in amber,
which casts no shadow,
and it has no sky.
He remembers his first time
there he found himself
standing centered in the street
where he had never
been before.
to either side buildings
that were not houses
and of which no two
were alike.
except in two details -
a great, dark, six panel door,
center.
flanked each side,
by tall windows,
of crystal glass.
Perfect.
Flawless.
Impervious.
Unbreakable.
Some two stories.
Some three.
Climbing
the broad granite steps
upward
a much greater distance
than it seemed
from the street
he found at the top
a pavement of slabbed
polished
dark strange stone
linking the stairs
which lead to the doors
iron hinged and latched
six panel doors
of wood
dark as mahogany
doors which are locked
like so many things in the City of Night.
doors for which he has
no key.
So he looked into the window
and saw there
books.
Floor to ceiling,
shelves and shelves,
of books.
Octavo -
Quarto -
Folio -
bound in leather
bound in parchment
bound in cloth
gilded
in a rainbow of colors
stretching away from the windows
as far as he could see.
He went again to the door
locked
he walked to the next building
to look through the windows
to see the same.
and he knew
that in there
was the thing he needed
in one of those books
he would find the key
he began to run
door to door
locked -
locked -
locked.
Screaming frustration
he would have thrown
a rock through a window
but there were no rocks there.
and he would discover
later
that the glass would not break
no matter what force
was brought to bear.
But there answer is in there
he knows it.
If only he can find the key.
