The Chimes

Oddments in thamesmud, these memories. Unlinked and unmeaning. And then I put them together in a line.

And there is old code flickering down at me to say, , whatever there is of meaning in the letters blinking, and what is it? Bricked high and stretching up into whatever sky’s still left. Old letters blinking and old brick stretching, and my upsidedown mind shifts against my will and a snatch of song buried deep dislodged too late.

A swagman sings the there-and-back of his day’s journey, a song whose cadence closes at our village square. All journeymen, lighting their way through near distance with a day’s tune. Most people won’t venture further than a day – tarry longer from home, and the memories kept there, and risk losing the melody back.

Along the horizon, the fields are lines of grey that get darker as they reach the sky. I stare at them hard to make a picture I can take, but it’s only objectmemories you can trust in the end. And I’m carrying those in the bag already. You can’t force them to flower either. Like bulbs, they show their secrets in their own time.

But for all that everyone keeps them and coddles them, I tend to think most adults wouldn’t know their own memories from anybody else’s. Something in their eyes and how they greet you in the market. At a certain point in your life, it’s like you have to choose what to keep.

I look at the nugget lying on his palm, milky silver and its strange grip of silence. ‘What is it?’ ‘You should pay more attention at Matins,’ he says. ‘This is the mettle in the river. What rose out of dischord’s ashes. This is what they pay us for.’ He closes the mettle in his palm.

When the weapon of dischord was destroyed – and most say that happened in the scar, out past Batter Sea – what they found in the remnants was palladium, the Pale Lady. The Lady was driven by the blast far and wide, and then she settled down, easy as you like, into the river. It’s there that we prospect her. Because palladium goes to make the Carill

The words are simple, because words are not to be trusted. Music holds the meaning now.

He sings and time stands still, as if he is walking on water. His voice is stark and true, and in it there are stretches of empty skies and a bright rime of salt. The tune starts with a glee and a lilt. The words don’t say much, but I can follow the melody’s meaning. It is about when innocence is really blindness. How when you want something very m