We were a height, then a wall, then a house. They carried us up stone by stone and leaned against us at evening. We learned backs before prayers. The mortar has changed a hundred times. It is always softer than the stone. The menders die. We stand facing the water.
For the first thousand years we understood.
They gave us chastity and nights. We kept both. The lamp recesses held two once the lamps went out. Twice a century, two would forget the century. The vowed kept the hours above them. Cloth on stone. Then skin. Their knees sought the joins in us. We kept the temperature.
On the south wall, letters over letters. Two words cut too deep for fashion survived: still here. We never knew who asked, or of whom, or whether it was a question.
Men between wars wrote the channel's traffic in juice browned over candles. Both sides slept here, in different decades. Confessed to the same wall. Along the water a town woke to volleys for one season. We kept the count. The goat's track closed. We let it.
Then we tired.
Four men came from that town. We hid them. Two we hid from each other. Both used the same words for the mornings. The words had been issued.
The wars returned in recut coats. Lovers returned certain they were first. At the box, the same questions, three answers, a priest a century worn thin against them. The visitors' book filled and stayed one book. The ink aged to one age.
Then we let go.
We stopped counting the steps. Let the benches decide the resting. Let the candle spring feed on its wax and the bell smooth its cord with hands that did not ring. We let the city happen.
One autumn a woman came four times. Sat in the third recess. Did not pray. On the last visit she left a spoon on the sill. We kept it. Nobody has asked about it.
Last winter two men from the Office arrived with 1984. One had lent it to the other. They had come to count the visitors.
“You understand why they leave,” the lender said.
“They come back for their renewals,” said the other.
The priest offered food. The lender said they had work. The other took off his coat. He had walked up without water.
The lender wrote him down as the first visitor. He said it was only for the total. The man put his coat on again.
The priest carried a bowl to the threshold. The man ate there, in his coat. We held his back. His colleague waited with the book.
A man comes with a black dog. “Biscuit,” he calls from the steps. One white hind foot. One ear folded at the tip. The dog has found a shoe outside the room where a visitor sleeps. He carries it to the man, who puts both hands behind his back.
The dog waits. The man goes down a step. The dog follows with the shoe. Behind them the visitor wakes and calls for it. The man comes back. He takes it from the dog's mouth with both hands and sets it by the door.
Now we clench.
Evenings, they stand where the vowed stood. Rain enters the mending. Frost opens us there. We are still here. The goat's track is not.
Below, windows light in an order we know. The funicular cars meet — twelve seconds of lit glass — and part. Screens climb the steps and go dark at the treeline. The city keeps a book that corrects itself. We hold the page no one edits. At dusk someone signs. Nothing charged. The ink is the age of the rest before they reach the candles.
They come up out of breath. Stand in the gate until it goes. Nobody asks for water. We have it.
A wall, a house, a hiding place, a bed, an office of sorts. Now a view. Each name was accurate. Each left less of us.
There is a form for us. We have not seen it. Down there, correct in every particular. The hand will thin. The ink will reach one age. It will outlast the wall.
The wall does not mind. We mind.
We watched the city arrive. We are prepared.