What the Valley Brings (LE MARAIS)

Low water under stone and plank. The rail gone pale where the hands go. You come down loaded, you go back light, and it takes the weight the way it takes rain. Forty winters of the same crossing. Nobody thanks a thing for holding. Nobody marks one crossing from the next. You put your foot down and it is there. Wool and iron, coffin and cart, low water running under the whole of it. What the valley brings, it bears. What the valley brings, it bears. Then the night the lamps stayed dark. Barefoot, and children, and no talking. Some of them bleeding. Some of them you. It did not count them. It held. They came down into the valley, into the trees, and by morning the rail was just a rail. Wool and iron, coffin and cart, low water running under the whole of it. What the valley brings, it bears. What the valley brings, it bears. High road over the tree line, coming down, down the long side, toward the water. Horses in column. Iron on them, every point facing into the valley. You reach the far bank in order. You put the first weight down onto the stone. And the stone does not take it. Halfway through the sound, it stops. The first plank leaves the sill. Then every plank behind it. The road stands on end. Nobody built it to do that. Nobody built it not to. Wool and iron, coffin and cart, low water running under the whole of it. What the valley brings, it bears. What the valley brings, it bears.