A Poem about Tay Bridge

Every age of poetry has a certain calling. What the world of poetry needs most now is a poem about Tay Bridge, which was once the calling of all the illuminated Muses that could be found. And the age itself seems to bay for it, as a vampiric coven bays for blood. So we shall furnish it one.

Tay Bridge

I have seen you here sometimes,
you have been nearby sometimes,
yet never have you felt
the sound of the bridge falling
the sound of the Tay Bridge falling
the sound of its fall
the sound of its revival -
you have not heard it sing
its brief songs.

It fell beneath like a rock,
fallen into the river,
and then it was loudest.
When it fell.

Only Calamity and Trouble were on hand
to re-build it, but then it fell again,
for they were not firm foundations.
The others said it was a liability,
eventually even Calamity gave up in fury.

For has not the Muse come once
to where this bridge lay -
lay, indeed, in every way -
lay prone to the elements,
which shifted it to sing only,
'Welcome to this bustling city —
But this bridge is cursed.'

As it falls, the city shifted into
blurring, blinding colours like the
cataclysmic sound of falling hail.

Yet the bridge saw the colours blur
eventually to blinding white.
For this bridge is bride to its slaughter,
its excursion is its demise,
its hopes are crushed by each edge
of a grinding wheel.
The blood it wears it weaves,
like a spider in a broken palace,
but how good is the blood
which it weaves?

As the Bridge falls, the city's scenes
become more frantic, but the water shields its eyes,
and shields the city's bride from its groom,
wipes them clean with its own hands,
with the violent waves and the grey mist waters.
As the water envelopes,
there is a red shift in the scene,
and the Bridge's noise -
which they all hear -
says that they shall break apart,
and each set against each,
until a kingdom refracts from the depth of ruins.

They do not all see.