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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.
Copyright ©
Daniel Henry Rodgers
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