The Street of Books

There are many streets in the City of Night.

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,

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,

ghosts of trees.
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,

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.

Winged Night

Winged night, swift pinioned, moon polished.

Awakes, swift lofts from Eldests shoulder.

Wings sailset, black bright.

True Navigator he,

of the Night Ocean.

Moon lit, Star dusted,

story keeper, story teller.

Claw catcher of Dreams.

Winged night, black beaked, the watcher.

Bearer of thought, memories house.

Sharp honed ear sent forth to listen

to Dreams freesailing

upon the Night Ocean.

The children of Gods,

the spawn of Monsters,

await, fear, the Dawn.

Winged night, Message bearer, Star keeper.

Born of the World Tree.

Blackbright, Thought of the Father.

First born of She,

Mother of the All. Who rode

stormtossed, the chaos void,

before First Thought brought forth

the world of time.

Winged night, pathfinder, wayfarer.

Sword eyed, taloned blacksharp

to catch swift

the fleeting Dreamships.

Messenger between the worlds he.

Nightblack, pinions wide,

Wings windswift above

the Nightdark Sea.

Winged night, tale teller, dream catcher,

nighteyed, to the West

spies empty, a Ship of Dream.

Sailtorn, rudder pintle lifted,

storm wracked, tear stained, kingpinned,

uncaptained. Hull cargo filled

with Soul-death, thought destroyer,

He, banished at First Light.

Winged night, tale teller, memory's keeper.

Stormblack clawed, bright star tipped,

swiftcatches the Dream Ship, deathfilled,

edgepoised at Dawns shining edge.

Touches not the cargo, nor spills.

Bears swiftwinged home the Dream Ship, Death Ship.

Rides blacksilver swift, the River of Dawn.

To the Great Hall, where Eldest sits dreaming.

Winged night, storm cryer, secret keeper.

Black winged, Dawnbright uplifted.

Talonbearer, holds wracked, soul dead,

the Dreamship life empty,

to the Hall of Fire and Gold,

where Eldest waits dreaming.

At his feet, nights red embers,

fire bright, fly sparking upward,

to quicken, newborn, on the River Dawn.

Winged night, swift pinioned, sun polished.

Returned finds now swift shut before him,

The Four Gates of the Mighty Hall,

with the shout of Ten Thousand Warriors.

North, finds Cold, the Winter Gate.

South, where Sun and Fire wait.

East, where Day comes forth, the Dawn.

West, from whence The Dark is drawn.

white, the cat

White, the cat sits, silent, waiting.

Tail curled round, feet covering,

still as stone, whiter than snow.

Thinks behind half lidded eyes

at the corner, bricked red vertical

of a building, stone first lain

in the year of our Lord 1837

an exercise in Euclid's geometry,

three lines intersect, one vertical

two horizontal, an arrows point

for those who will see.

Morning light, cold, early May,

blue the sky, dry clear, no clouds.

The city waking, not yet started

upon the business that day brings.

The work of night remains still,

undiscovered, hidden by the light.

She waits, there, for the eye

which can see, and the will

to follow. The chosen, cursed,

known neither to Fate, nor to God

White, the cat sits, silent, waiting,

looks neither right nor left, unseen.

The many walk, past, preoccupied.

Minds miles from their moving bodies.

Whose lives unspooling round them,

tangled dim perception, time, binding

foot and hand, so fall they headlong

into death. Unknowing, unknown.

And so leave behind,

no shadow.

In jewelers windows, watch escapements

wheel in endless journeys pivoting

left and right, sum to zero, to nothing.

Still, the second hand circles,

the minute and hour hands sweep,

return to the moment of beginning.

A stopped clock, twice every day

is correct.

White, the cat watches sun shadows

scribing slow arcs, sundial the world.

Triangulate the sun. Buildings, gnomon

anchoring darkness, measure the day.

Intersecting planes of light and dark,

mirror windows, incidence equals reflection.

Time is but a geometry made manifest,

by the reflected, refracted day.

The blinding light of an invisible sun.

Thy Ward is Intricate -

He moves through both light,

and dark.

White the cat, bright, his eye catches.

White tail curled round, hiding

bright feet. Waits still, there in shadow,

now silver bright, she on the arrows

sharp point, whose tip abrupt pierces,

breaks the chains of his thought

of time,

of money,

of women,

of sex.

Of lies to be told.

Of truths elided.

Of things desired.

Of money to buy.

Of business the day

Of pleasure the night.

White, the cat knows,

he is the one.

So fixes her gaze,

so stills,

so stops him -

There?

No, there.

His career abrupt halted. With black

slit iris, golden tigers eye, which behind

leaping, yellow flaming, dancing light,

fires, freezes him into stillness.

The world unseeing, flows about him,

briefly slows unstopped. The waters,

the river, eddy round him a moment,

a stone, a pebble, then speeds again,

spinning ever downward

into the eternal ocean.

White, the cat, brighter still

than the light which upon her rests,

stands now, pin balanced

on the moments point.

At the alley's mouth sharply,

needs no more wait.

Upon that line of infinite time,

She, bright edged with stars fire.

She, ten thousand suns burning

holes in the shadow fabric of

night. Her flaming eyes illumine

his soul. She knows him true,

cannot be deceived. Now must he

follow her into the dark.

Distant low echoes, thunder

between the towers weight,

gravity calling falling failing

groaning steel, cloud grey

billows outward spreading,

so strange and beautiful,

the flowers of death.

Colors fading, melt

before him, chalk

on a wet sidewalk,

running in a dry rain.

Falls black, from an unclouded

sky. Leave behind the city

in towers of shadow.

Stand now round them,

streets empty of life.

White, the cat, star bright, shining,

moves away, down the ghost alley,

where so still, the nights work remains

undiscovered, at the place where the eyes

of day are blind. Where he alone can see.

Time stopped he, awakens into nightmare.

- Follow -

She, now the star of his wandering bark,

his feet obey, his minds consent

ungiven, the black bricked alley

swallows him, gulleted. Cold stone

jars his step. His mind commands stop.

Yellow eyes, flame flicker into his, knifelike.

- Follow -

White, the cat moves, She, his only light,

soft footed, through the shadow alley.

He fears to follow, fears more to stay,

she opens a path through a hungering

darkness, he feels its hunger, knows

its desires, eternal, unsated. Remembers,

now, it fears the light of stars. Sudden,

childhoods memory awakens. Years

forgotten. As a child he dreamt, of

this land of night, and the Dark City.

The City called Night.

I dream, it's only a dream. His fear

forgotten, so, he dreams again.

What harm can befall one

who dreams? He will awaken,

sun shining, safe in his bed.

Silver star bright, the cat sits, silent,

waiting, tail curled round, feet covered.

Eyes, black slit pupils, flame irised, flickering.

His voice now found, he speaks -

"Lead on."

So rises She again.

As forward she leads,

so behind her,

he follows.

Into this, the new found

City of Night.

Cathedral

Sudden,

the falling overtakes him.

In that brief moment between

waking,

and sleeping.

It has been here.

He knows this

from the psychic stench

that his mind finds revolting.

That he cannot block out.

Which it leaves behind wherever,

and whenever,

it has passed.

Which seizes his mind,

so brutal,

and returns him

always,

to that first time.

Oh sweet child, how came you there.

A carrion smell.

Some once living thing,

now warm dead, rotting,

maggot infested, feasting,

who new create the foul corpse

till it rise again, new set a-wing

in clouds of countless

living flies.

He wonders where he is -

this time.

Or just,

when,

he may be.

As he must breath -

so he must think.

And there the foulness enters.

He can no more seal his mind

than he can blot out the images,

of that which has been seen.

Oh sweet child, how came you there.

He opens his eyes.

He is facing -

A Cathedral of black stone,

wrought with chisels,

hammers of iron black,

and cold steel blue.

Here is not a realm of Faery.

Nor is silver found here

but in the form

of cold moons light.

Which has no source,

yet casts shadows long,

as if it hangs low

in the ink black sky.

Towers rise to either side

of the great ogival arch,

where stood the doors.

Above the portal circles

the great Rose Window.

Eye of the Wind.

Its elaborate tracery razor etched

by the cold quicksilver light.

Carved from black bones of the earth -

stones mortared with night itself.

Precise,

each pillar,

rib and stone,

mortared seams pointed

with the blacksilver,

no moon light.

Finest tracery,

in ten thousand shades -

black iron, black steel,

tarnished silver, charcoaled,

enamel black, velvet black,

smooth as lacquer,

polished.

His shadow sleeps before him,

resting in the silver glow on the stair.

Rises upward sawtoothed

on treads, which serrated edge

no human foot has trod.

The thin light is of

the coldest winter night,

of full moon on snow,

of silver white ice,

empty as space,

cold as death.

He looks into the nothing sky.

His shadow, still,

sleeps upon the stair before him.

He turns to find -

his shadow still asleep,

unchanged,

before him.

Oh sweet child, how came you there.

The stench is (was?) a summons,

howled, through the void between,

cried havoc, loosed the dogs of war.

So called him into

this new place.

She did not lead him here.

Confusion fills his mind

with the noise of uncertainty.

He does not remember,

a Cathedral.

In all the years of the Dark City

there has never been, before,

a Cathedral.

Nor church of any type,

rising above the empty streets

and alleyways

He sees her face, the first.

How many tears?

Oh sweet child, how came you there.

Gothic,

towered,

buttressed,

clerestoried -

tho some mischievous force

has pulled it upward,

stretched it,

to the absurd degree

of the two who walked

with Christ from his tomb,

heads reaching to the sky.

The Resurrection,

from the Gospel of Peter.

She did not summon.

She is not here.

The smell comes strongest,

from inside,

beyond the door,

within the Church.

He stands upon the threshold.

Does not remember the broad steps,

climbing them,

one by one upward.

How many stairs,

from street to door?

He hears a voice clearly

- from the great Rose Window -

whisper his ear.

"Thirteen steps.

One for each apostle.

And one for Our Lord."

"Enter."

He turns his face

to the remains of the doors.

Huge, massive,

hewn of night black oak

from trees of a size

no longer, if ever,

extant.

Carved into

twined

and twining shapes.

Of Saints,

and Demons.

Of God,

in his heaven.

Of Satan,

in his Hell.

He sees at his feet splinters,

baulks, shards,

of sliver shattered oak.

The doors hang,

crooked on their hinges.

Black iron hinges,

wrought by giants, surely.

Straight the doors had stood.

Now -

They lean gainst the black stone jambs,

strong legs meant for stronghold,

against assault from without.

The great carven doors,

blown outward from within.

Are burned and singed -

where some power of flame

struck in violence against them,

seeking escape

"Enter."

He walks slowly forward,

cautious,

stepping over debris.

Blocks of stone,

splinters of oak.

He sees here still glowing embers.

(how odd to see color,

in the Night Dark Land.)

And there, smoke like incense rising.

The white twisting wraiths

of trees long dead,

wind ever upward,

until -

they are lost

in the darkness.

"Enter."

He moves forward,

following his shadow

into a deeper darkness.

Crosses the threshold,

enters the Nave.

There sees a great stone forest,

sketching before him

the shape of the nave.

The path to the Altar is tiled,

a labyrinth,

a maze,

a path.

To confuse

lead the faithful

to the place where,

dum pendabat

Christ on His Cross.

Above the altar, lit below

by serried soldier ranks

of candles glowing, votive.

Lit by hands unseen,

unknown.

warm golden light,

so out of place

in this world of night

Prayers sent to heaven

by their flickering light.

He has never before

seen light such as this

within the Dark City.

He is become a moth,

drawn unthinking

by the golden light.

Each footfall,

reflected,

from ceilings,

walls of stone black,

silver traced clerestory

arched high,

collect themselves together.

A congregation of whispers

between the walls,

columns,

maze tiled floor.

Christ on his Cross,

pendant above the Altar

his face,

moved

by the flickering light,

seems to mouth a prayer.

Whose eyes dispassionate

gaze into the eternal darkness.

Light flickers also

below the Altar

at the base of the stair,

where on cold stone,

at the omphalos of the maze,

labyrinth,

path,

there lies -

a shape.

He stands now at the base,

below the Altar.

Beneath the tortured Christ,

whose gaze,

dispassionate,

remarks neither him,

nor the dark.

The smell is strongest here.

Overwhelming.

At his feet lies a huddled mass

of cloth.

Robes? Gown?

Cassock.

A priest.

Oh man, how came you here?

He stands thinking

for a moment.

Of what he knows,

fears, he must do.

He knows now,

what summoned him tonight.

Tho it was not She

who had always before.

He has been here many times

since it began,

so many years ago.

When he had softly touched

the first one,

to see if any life remained,

but had found there

only death,

and had seen.

Oh sweet child, how came you there.

He kneels beside the corpse

of the Priest who was

in his rightful place

at the wrongful time.

Stretches out his hand

towards the face,

so pale,

so white.

Marked.

He has seen that mark before,

He had seen it first,

all those years ago,

the mark of Pain.

and Fear.

and Death.

Oh sweet child, how came you there.

His hand stops of its own,

hovers,

still,

above the cold face.

He breathes deep,

wages again

the war within himself.

"I can walk away."

He thinks, and knows that he lies.

"This time I will just walk away.

There is nothing I can do.

I cannot raise the dead,

I cannot destroy that which I follow.

I do not have to do this."

He raises his face,

his eyes,

to gaze upward,

through the votive light,

at Christ on his Cross,

"Don't make me do this."

He whispers to the carving,

pendant in the darkness behind it.

Floating there,

above the Altar.

The place of sacrifice.

Lit from below

by the flickering candles.

Christ's gaze,

dispassionate.

He looks again at the huddled mass

of cloth and flesh which lies before him.

His hand reaches again toward the cold face,

when something changes.

For an eternal moment

- suspended -

The Christ

The Priest

The Witness.

With a great shudder

the Priest takes

a long

slow

breath.

He sits now, frozen,

watching the Priest.

One breath.

Then another.

The Priest has survived.

He Lives.

Oh God, he lives.

The Priests breathing settles,

an even counting rhythm.

The Witness sitting back

on the cold stones,

pulls his knees to his chest,

rests his head upon them,

his tears fall hot and fast,

his body wracked by sobbing,

until exhausted,

sleep finds him.

And dreamless

(for who dreams in the land of dreams?)

the hours pass,

the candles,

one by one,

gutter and die.

And Christ on His Cross gazes,

still,

silent,

into the encompassing

darkness.

Machines

It extends, forever,

beneath the surface.

layer

beneath

layer -

story

subsuming

story -

chasms,

caverns,

unnatural bottomless wells.

He knows,

but does not know how,

that should he

- fall -

he will die so

- falling -

thirst and hunger working,

until time passing ,

perhaps years,

his body turns to dust,

to fall

now gentle slow

forever -

or till the Dark City end.

He remembers many roads,

rails, bridges, tunnels.

Huge gates, black toothed,

portcullis, Dragon maws,

greyfire steam breathing,

bluefire flaming.

Chains and cables,

pulleys and sheaves,

great engines shrieking,

howling, banging,

drip black water,

run midnight oil.

He is driving?

riding?

He is not sure.

It is elusive this memory,

dream?

He crosses many bridges.

Massive iron beams,

square bolted, round riveted.

Not welded - wrought.

Steel blue, iron grey, carbon black.

Like the old bridge

above the Penobscot

at Bangor.

They destroyed that one.

Cut it with shaped charges

Dropped it into the river.

Gravity reworking the iron in seconds.

Over one hundred years?

Gone in seconds.

He wonders -

to what will he tie his memories?

when they've taken it all away.

Beneath the City,

turn massive Machines.

Untiring, unresting.

Eternal mechanisms tower.

Weighted hammers fall,

to pound massive billets

at the command

of unseen masters.

There.

It is.

The place of hotblack oil,

and steamdark metal.

A great foundry,

forges aglow,

radiate cold blue heat.

There monstrous presses

stamp endless, senseless,

meaningless shapes,

from secret greyblue metals.

eternally hammer and pound

in endless,

mindless,

fabrication -

forever create,

useless things -

for pointless ends.

The Great Bridge

He stands.

Centered.

Above the Keystone.

On the Great Bridge.

The Dark City extant,

as far

as ever eye can see.

How far,

how far,

how far may that be?

He singsongs the thought -

silently -

inside his head.

But his mind cannot calculate

the distance the City spans

from the tiny,

reversed,

inverted image,

projected,

(through his eye darkly)

to the world inside his head.

He looks down upon the City

from the Bridges arcing span.

The streets below,

empty of any living thing,

provide no scale to hang -

a dimension on.

The structures stretching

into the faded distance

could be small as dollhouses,

or massive as mountains.

Gazing out across the City

from the height of the Great Bridge,

it is impossible to know.

The sky above

sunless -

cloudless -

ochre -

and emptier,

(were that possible),

than the City spread below.

The heavens glow

with a faded brown light.

"If the smog of LA were luminous,"

he thinks,

"this is how the world would be."

He stands.

Centered.

Above the Keystone

of the Great Bridge.

Hands rest palm down

on the cold cement railing.

He can feel it,

gritty under his fingers

when he smooths them

over the sandpaper surface.

Today it feels real.

Tomorrow?

The air is cool on his face.

He does not remember

when the Great Bridge

first appeared.

It plays no part in his earliest

remembrance.

Nor does he remember

when first the sky

began to glow.

On his earliest journeys,

it had always been night.

With neither Moon,

nor Stars,

in the coal dust black sky.

Nor had there been a City,

then.

The first time he entered

the Dark Land,

he remembered,

he had found himself,

standing alone,

upon a narrow road.

With no idea where he was

and no memory of how

he got there.

There had been no City,

then.

Only an empty desolation

of stones and dust,

which crawled

forever

away from him,

into infinite blackness.

He had been afraid then,

afraid of the darkness,

afraid because he could see,

in a world which contained no light.

and afraid because

he did not know

the way home.

it was a dark and stormy night.

I changed my mind -

For as long as I can remember,

beginning when I was a child of three or four,

I have dreamt of the Dark City.

In the beginning there was no city at all.

Simply a crossroads,

lost upon an endless,

dust black plain.

Silent.

Empty.

Beneath a black and starless sky.

It was, and is, a desolate, terrible place.

In my earliest journeys I would often see many people,

busy about some task,

always some distance away.

And, as a child afraid of being alone,

there at the crossroads,

beneath that coal black sky,

I would run towards them,

fast as ever I could.

Yet no matter how fast I ran,

they always remained some distance away.

And so I would awaken, lost for a moment,

alone in my room.

It was quite frightening when I was a child.

Over the years the people have vanished,

for reasons known only to some secret part of my mind

which is inaccessible to "me".

As years have passed,

the City has grown,

so that it spreads now,

far as eye can see.

Nor is it eternally night anymore,

there is sometimes a dim,

strange, ochre light,

which has no source,

and which serves merely

to make the City a more desolate place,

of even less color,

than it has in the dark.

Usually, when I am there in the light,

I find myself standing upon the Great Bridge,

which spans the City, side to side.

Here on Earth such a span,

would be a marvel of engineering,

one of the wonders of the world.

But to stand upon it,

to look out,

across the endless

and empty streets,

is to be as alone

as it is possible to be.

The City is continually changing,

and there are caverns, chambers,

tunnels, forever beneath the City.

Filled with great and terrible

machines.

But what they are,

and why -

I do not know.

Perhaps, if I listen carefully,

the Dark City will tell me stories.

Perhaps, over the years, it already has,

and I need only remember them.

Either case may be true.

and here in this place,

I will share them.