Christopher Haywood Poet Quatrain

Stone Witness

The limestone cracked, and the timber turned to ghost,
Leaving only the St. James Tower behind—
A juggernaut monolith, a stone-ribbed host,
To the singular fire that the poets refined.

I watched from the rubble, a broken face,
While the bells within turned to cooling lead;
I was the witness to the city's ruined grace,
The heavy silence of the unhoused dead.

Then came the pulleys, the steam, and the rope,
The frantic rhythm of the Great Rebuild;
They hoisted me up on a ladder of hope,
To a height that the soot and the ashes had filled.

I am perched once more on a frame of new steel,
Watching the grid rise in brick and in glass,
But I know the heat that the stones can feel,
And the "cleansing" hours that the poets let pass.

I look down on streets that are paved with the past,
Where the Laureate walks with his polished refrain;
He thinks that the beauty is destined to last,
That the "rising" has washed out the blood and the stain.

But from my new seat on the skyscraper’s brow,
I see the serrated edge of the sky;
I was the gargoyle then, I am the gargoyle now—
The only one left who refuses to lie.

My fellows are cold and of unfeeling bone,
Rigid steel beams that ignore the wind's cry;
They do not breathe like the mortar and stone,
But pierce through the clouds with a silver-gray eye.

The city has hardened, its heartbeat is fast,
Wrapped in a skeleton, hollow and bright;
The companions of old were too fragile to last,
But these new giants thrive in the electric night.

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