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I crept along the mountainside, approached the cleft.<br />
The turrets stood above the treeline,<br />
gutted shells of blackened stone.<br />
Roosting there were birdlike things that sailed<br />
out of sunset skies, came gliding low<br />
to crumple into marble hollows.<br />
They'd mutter there in goblin tongues,<br />
shift to and fro on human hands<br />
then lift in clumps to flutter moonward.<br />
When they’d gone the dead arose,<br />
timid castle-dwellers, ghosts<br />
who danced in pairs<br />
through skylit halls, flew up<br />
the stairs to spill from empty windows,<br />
struck the ground with unheard thuds<br />
then raced around to fall again.<br />
One stopped, a small and tousled child.<br />
His laughing eyes collected mine<br />
and drew me to him as he leapt.<br />
Some time on I found<br />
myself in endless gardens.<br />
Pale faces gazed at me<br />
from glasslike pools enwreathed in minnows.<br />
The narrow paths caressed me like a corpse.<br />
The gardens grew impenetrable,<br />
so many new beginnings.<br />
I came at last to one high sward<br />
set deep against the hills<br />
below the wheeling crow-crowd,<br />
there where life began,<br />
the blighted avenues, gates flung apart<br />
and twisting gently.<br />
I passed them all to find the silent tower.<br />
34 Typehouse Literary Magazine
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