Jeff Newberry

To Build a Tower

—The (Little) Tower of Babel (1563), Pieter Bruegel the Elder

It all begins with sound.

From the wondering “hmmm”
before pencil scores paper, before
drawing becomes blueprint, to the final grunt
a stonemason exhales before they call the work
done. Consider the symmetry 

of this tower, rising into the weather. Clouds
form and curious birds must light on cornices
to sing strange songs. This far up,
the world reduces itself to idea—
the outline of what might be dwellings.
Even the landscape an artistic afterthought,
a rough sketch to make it all look real. 

The tiny galleons gather in a shadowed port,
laden with people and their projects,
the bakers who feed the workers
who vocalize the architect’s fancy.
This far up, no one would hear a gull’s scream
or note a galley boy dumping trash
his family could never afford. 

A single missed cue would find them
dashed into each other, crashed,
sunk into a sea no one at work
above would hear above the wind.
Nothing the creator would hear,
lost (as he is) in plans and blueprints. 

Perhaps the workers sing to each other
as, brick by brick, wooden slat by slat,
this god-feared thing punctures the sky.
Their words would compete with the wind’s
insistence, their verses nothing more
than mnemonic, reminding them
where the song is, or where it should be.

The architect would eventually lose
sight, too, down below, gazing up
and seeking words to call it: monstrous,
bigger than life, enormous, huge.
How language fails in the face of realized
vision. How the gods fall silent
and jealous the closer we get to speech.

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Jeff Newberry is the author most recently of How to Talk About the Dead (Red Hawk Publications, forthcoming Fall 2023). An essayist, novelist and poet, his writing has appeared in a wide variety of print and online journals, including Brevity: Concise Nonfiction, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Red Rock Review and Laurel Review.