The Bell Tower That Leaned In

I. The Pastor’s Hand At dawn’s brittle cusp— he climbs, each step a nail in time’s coffin breath ragged a Psalm torn mid-hymn. The rope tastes of incense and myrrh— Liberty’s fracture braided through its fibers a wound that never quite healed. He pulls— clang— a bell toll from Poe’s cathedral of despair a hymn of blood-ink and rusted breath. The shadows coil; scripture frays. Faith flickers— does anyone still hear? Each toll an exorcism. Each silence— reproof. II. The Town’s Celebration Midnight’s spine splinters— rockets scream like seraphim undone. The bell convulses in bronze jubilee a copper throat ruptured with Hemingway’s dread. “For whom,” it mutters beneath the blaze— but no one listens. Children suck sweetness from sulphur lovers cling beneath the clang, their shadows etched in cobblestone fog. Old men raise cracked chalices— liquid memories. The tower disrobes. It dances. It bleeds. III. The Lovers’ Tryst (overlapping the Pastor’s sermon) Here— the world blurs to charcoal. They carve names in limestone flesh a scar older than forgiveness. Their memories thread the bell’s unspoken prayer— a psalm of mouths and ink-stained breath. It does not toll. It listens. Their hearts throb against the rusted must pulses striking time like flint against flint. Below— the town melts into watercolors. Moonlight spills like wine over copper skin. The past folds like origami cranes left in rain. IV. The Tourist’s View He climbs— camera held as relic or rosary. Light breaks between lancet panes. Streets below: runes, scars, equations. He speaks the town aloud— each name an invocation. He is dizzy with witness. The bell does not toll. It withholds. The silence is not absence— It is prophecy. V. The Final Ascent (voices blur — Pastor fades, Lovers pulse, Town distorts) Night, hollowed to bone. Hands claw at stone: brittle gospel. The rope— untouched. The bell— unswung, waiting. He climbs through the relics of devotion— Vows crumbling in lichen. Prayers wrapped in rust. The bell looms— a maw of iron swallowing liturgy and hallelujahs alike. No blessing. No rebuke. He steps beyond breath. The bell does not toll— but the tower leans inward. Not in judgment. Not in mourning. In final witness. VI. Metapoetic Echo (outside the tower, outside time) The bell tolls still— not in bronze or rope or lung but in the trembling script of memory. This poem folds itself around the silence echo chasing echo word chasing wound. A bell is a mouth. A poem, too. Both toll. Neither forgets. VII. The Universal Toll For whom does it toll when time buckles under relics? The tower holds us all— pastor, mourner lover, pilgrim birth, life death. The bell answers not with clang— but with heartbeat muse word. The toll is not theirs. It is ours. It has always been.