In a pub where the peat-smoke wrote cursive in air,
An old penman winked from his creaking oak chair,
And murmured of thresholds both tender and dire,
Where angels grow wings and devils catch fire.

“Two pillars,” he said, “with a mischievous grace,
Guard a curious door in a most secret place;
They sway like a sonnet, they part like a sigh,
They trouble the earth and embroider the sky.”

A pilgrim might wander with halo askew,
Or swagger in boots with intentions askance too;
Yet all who draw near, be they rogue, saint, or clerk,
Feel clocks lose their manners and reason goes shirk.

For there lies a border no mapmaker draws,
Where laughter meets longing and longing meets pause;
A step is a question, a glance is a key,
And wit is the toll for what might come to be.

No brazen announcements, no vulgar parade,
Just glimmers and guesses in half-light and shade;
A tilt of the moon, a conspiratorial breeze,
And hearts learning grammar in tremulous degrees.

So Heaven? Perhaps, in a hush softly spun,
Where two become rhyme and the rhyme becomes one;
And Hell? Just as likely, if folly runs free,
And desire outpaces just good company.

Thus, mind how you wander, said he with a grin,
For gates may invite you as much as they spin;
And whether you’re blessed or deliciously felled,
Depends how you knock… and how long you are held.