The Tudor House Conservation District

Lyrics

Late afternoon.
Seventy-five degrees.
A walk through the covenant.

The gables repeat their catechism in timber and stucco.
Every roof, a thousand gray tongues of slate,
Speaking the language of 1924.
George Willis's postcard from Stratford,
Held in the light for a hundred years.
The leaded panes hold the quiet street
In a grid of diamond-shaped arguments.
An architecture of agreement.

This is the civic discipline.
The long, slow work of staying the same.
An application form in triplicate.
A line-item veto on a shade of paint.
The board convenes on a Tuesday evening
To guard the grammar of this place,
To hold the sentence written long ago.

I remember the file on Berkeley Road.
The front door, painted a shade of green
Three steps too light on the approved swatch.
A letter sent. A correction made.
The mineral smell of the replacement roof,
Dust settling on the manicured lawn.
The quiet insistence of the original text.

But the ledgers are silent on certain names.
The men from Juarez who nailed the first slate,
Their Spanish lost in the Georgia heat.
The letters of appeal, signed only
"Mrs. William Abernathy," her handwriting
The only ghost of her own argument.
Their labor holds these lines true,
Uncredited in the city minutes.

This is the civic discipline.
The long, slow work of staying the same.
An application form in triplicate.
A line-item veto on a shade of paint.
The board convenes on a Tuesday evening
To guard the grammar of this place,
To hold the sentence written long ago.

The cane taps its way down Clarendon Avenue.
The sun goes down behind a perfect Tudor roofline.
The covenant holds.
The sentence holds.