I.

Brown sky.
Torn brown landscape -
Pools of black,
Burnt broken branches.
Too hot - parching dry.
Halfway buried,

The large iron bell.

As large as a man
Could move and set,
Coated with oily dirt,
Caked up inside
As I begin to work
On the bell.

Careful to keep
The bell silent,

I clear it,
Set it,
Brush and wipe,
A last quick drink,
Then the last of my water
To clean the bell.

I'm a long ways out,
But the bell was here.
Part of me knew it would be.
Nothing else left - I sit down.

Look at the bell.

Not much to look at -
Dull, heavy, dark, unmarked.
No beauty, but still
My world is locked hard
Right here, now.

Part of me feels
The sandy heat -
Like the blast of a furnace.
Part of me knows
This is unneccesary...

I ring the bell.

II.

Dark trees, tangled together
Laced with briars,
Dark paths draw me deeper
And further,
Cold, wet darkness blows right through me -
Like searching, cold, dead fingers
Grasping at me.

Wolves cry out and mourn;
Frightened and angry, lost, hungry -
In the cold, windy very night
Very dark.

The sharp sense of death, and of presence, brings me around -
Quiet now wolves, quiet wind,
Quiet now fears, and my heart!
Smell the death, fear, oily smoke - from underground.

The long, dark, tangled path -and my fear
Against my quick-beating heart, my mind brings me here.
My own private Stonehenge of shadows circle me round
My mind and my will strive together
Dark is the night, but black
Very black
Are the stairs leading down.

The first edge of panic -
The body's not here!
Think of wolves, think of men, think no further!

The next edge of panic -
Into the black
Litter gives way to clean stone
Wind gives way to clean cold
I know as I go inward, downward
Light soon enough.

The third edge of panic -
I know by the smell that he's here
(sightless black well)
Stumble, shuffle, feel past him -
Imagine, pretend, that he fell.

First, I begin to notice
I'm starting to see.
The smell of smoldering oil - the orange tinge
Of the darkness around me.

The chamber is flooded with
Flickering orange moonlight -
An ageless iron rod lamp, an oil well.
White moonlight stabs through a shaft
Illumines the bell.

A large iron bell
Deep underground
Forged in ageless fear
Banished to this chamber

The chamber is empty.
The stairs, the woods are empty.
I fill them all -
With the toll of the bell.

III.

I am the guardian
Of the bell,
Like a gargoyle
guarding hell,
And I stay inside my cave,
And I cry and watch and rave,
In my masterless assylum
Of my making of my home,
Never free to leave here,
Never free to leave or roam,
Never free to ring the bell
Which I guard like gates to hell,
No, to never ring the bell,
In my home so like a cave,
But to only watch and cry,
And to only watch and rave.
I do not ring the bell,
No, to never ring the bell,
Not to ring the black iron bell,
Not to ever ring the bell...

IV.

(part four of "The Bells" by E. A. Poe.)

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people- ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells-
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-
Bells, bells, bells-
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

The first three sections of this poem are original,
The fourth section is from "The Bells" by Edgar Allen Poe.