Frostbite and Other Victorian Values

The moor was drunk on frost and light,
Still staggering from the wounds of night;
Its breath hung thick — a ghostly sigh —
Above a world too cold to die.

My boots broke the silence, crisp and deep,
Each step a curse the breeze would keep;
The air bit hard — the kind of pain
That clears the soul and numbs the brain.

Below, the clouds rolled fat and slow,
Like cream spilt thick on hills of snow;
The valley slept; the dawn blushed pale —
A sky of wine, a world of shale.

Then through the fog, absurdly proud,
A tower poked above the cloud —
Peel Tower, stiff, erect, and keen,
The rudest thing the moor has seen.

Built in days of high decree,
For Robert Peel — of “bobbies,” you see.
The man who taxed your daily bread,
Then told you justice lay ahead.

They raised his shaft for all to praise,
While half the folk had darker days;
Still there it stands, all stone and smirk,
A monument to paperwork.

Perhaps it points to Heaven’s gate.
Or just to say, “I’m still first-rate.”
A gritstone jest, a pompous dart —
Straight through the ribs of England’s heart.

The breeze approved in a teasing tone.
It howls like laughter through the stone;
“Men build their pride,” it seemed to say,
“Then freeze beside it, anyway.”

The scent of peat, the tang of ore,
The whiff of sheep and something more —
All mixed beneath that blushing sky,
A brew of earth and alibi.

I stood and thought — as fools will do —
That I was somehow better too;
Outlasting time with words and breath,
Defying frost, denying death.

And yet, for all my clever lies,
The truth was bright and would not rise:
That every jest, and every try,
Melts quietly in the morning sky.

The Belt of Venus, soft and shy,
Drew pink across eternity’s eye;
No sound, no step, no beating heart —
Just me, the cold, and my art.

I laughed — the wind blew back my grin,
And froze it halfway on my skin.
The moor was merciless, yet kind —
It left no warmth, but cleared the mind.

And though I mocked that tower’s disguise,
I knew my heart was built likewise —
Half jest, half hope, refusing why,
Among those islands in the sky.

So here I stand, absurd and true,
With frozen pride and numb virtue —
Still praising pain, as Peel once knew,
Frostbite, and other Victorian values.