The bridge is a state of suspension Between the living and the dead, That which is past and the present, Between what is forgotten and the eternal, The resilient and the unyielding; Between everything pristine and the sumptuosness Of the transient; For we exist twice: As shell, as stone Hereafter as stillness.
Stretched between forests Of holm oaks and old olives wild rosemary Pomegranates and low garrigue On the riverbed we are approached Open with outstretched hand against the stony bark, A handprint on the coarse shell, My cheeck against the chalk, sunbaked stone from Fantasmic foams of the ursea.
Limestone in ochre yellow, The shells of ancient oceans Mussels and microcorrals Algae, invertebrates, nautili, Aggregated and sorted by currents, Stiffened and fossilised; Primal seabed carved out block by block, Raised to vertical, Wedgelocked by its own weight; Twice dead, therefore: In the sea and then as a thing Raised up by the globe’s Geonormous forces And the cosmic boom of orogenesis.
Here were officials and engineers, Local taxmasters and secretaries, Celtic craftsmen, slavetraders, Masons, Gaelic bridgebuilers, Trenchers, tunneldiggers; Here were quarries, levers, Tools, saws and chissels, Hoisting wheels, blueprints, Leadtips, plumb lines, dragnets, Scaffolding, pulleys, Crushed fingers and toes, Language confusion, death and visionary dreams.
The river, Le Gardon, wild lustrous archeflow Excavator of gorges, forestslitter, Depositor of sediment and an sich creator of bridges, witness to beauty; I have seen sunlight Mirrored in the arc of the bridge The self-image of the river On a crafted seabed, The golden shadow Of all time lost.
Ducting from Eûres to Nîmes Fresh, limerich water Favoured by Roman hydrologists, Collected in a basin Ditstributed into pipes For cool marble shit an flush, Bottom vents for flooding The floor of the arena; Model human endeavour, Luxurious and civilisational In the loose sense, Hence, not only calcified But also cultified.
Ah yes, we were many before me, We saw the same, Felt the weight The silence and the wildness Of basic geometric forms Carrefully fitted onto Natural morphology; We have sat together By the breathable limestone In our chambers while ink Dried on our pentips; We have all dipped In the undercurrent of stillness.
In memory of Annie Dillard (1945-2026)
"The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and omega. It is God's brooding over the face of the water; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings."
Annie Dillard: Teaching a Stone to Talk, 1982, section V.
