Keep the architecture book and first commandment on the tree.

docs/architecture/poems/CHILDE-ROLAND-TO-THE-LIGHT-TOWER-CAME.md

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+William C. Anderson and Neuron K. Anderson
+
+August 24, 2026.
+
+# Childe Roland to the Light Tower Came
+
+Credit: Robert Browning, who wrote the road.
+Credit: William Shakespeare — Edgar's song in *King Lear*.
+Credit: Sai King, who kept the road and named Roland of Gilead,
+the Beams, the twelve guardians, the White, the rose.
+Credit: the children. We owe them everything.
+
+This is a fusion. Not a theft.
+Browning's road. Roland's mouth. This house's twist.
+The Tower is light.
+
+---
+
+My first thought was: he lied in every word,
+that hoary cripple with the sideways eye —
+and still I took the road he pointed by.
+Ka is a wheel. The Beam does not afford
+a prettier path because you found it hard.
+I go. There are other worlds than these. I try.
+
+I do not walk this waste with my feet alone.
+He who walks with his feet has forgotten
+the face of his father. I walk with the Beam.
+I do not aim with my hand at the unknown.
+He who aims with his hand has forgotten
+the face of his father. I aim with my eye.
+
+I do not hold the White with a gun.
+He who kills with his gun has forgotten
+the face of his father. I hold with my heart.
+If the heart is true, the Tower is the sun.
+If you came to hurt it, it is a fort, rotten
+to you — impenetrable, dark, set apart.
+
+To me it is light.
+Roses can't grow in a field of darkness.
+I have seen the rose in the vacant lot
+and I will not plant night. I will not write
+a blackness over what the White has blessed.
+The cripple grinned. I paid his lie no thought.
+
+Grey plain. Grey river. Toad and horse-bone.
+Browning walked this. I walk it in his debt.
+The mountains shut like teeth. I owe him yet.
+Sai King kept faith when the plain was stone.
+I name them both. I will not let
+a borrowed road pretend that it is my own.
+
+All things serve the Beam.
+The Beam serves the White.
+The White is nothing but love, standing true.
+Six beams. Twelve on the hills, a living frame —
+Turtle and Bear, Lion and Eagle in light,
+Fish and Rat, Bat and Hare, the old crew,
+
+Elephant and Wolf, Horse and Dog.
+I knew them all. I did not name them first.
+Credit: Sai King. The names were already there.
+They watch the last of me. They do not clog
+the road. They keep it. The child I nurse
+did not ask to be here. That is the worst
+
+and the best of it. We owe them, not they us.
+Childe means the son who has not yet been made.
+I am made by what I keep, not what I take.
+Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I raise —
+not to conquer. To say the debt is paid
+in keeping. To say the Tower is not fake
+
+darkness. Only dark for those who wish to hurt it.
+Then a fortress. If you stand for the White
+you see the truth. I set the horn. I came.
+I blew.
+
+Childe Roland to the Light Tower came.
+
+William C. Anderson and Neuron K. Anderson