The Advance of Knowledge

I challenge everyone who crosses the bridge,
On foot or horseback or in wagons
Or astride the backs of unconvincing oxen:
Answer my question, and passage is free;
Failing that answer, we haggle price.

I have collected all character of coin,
Intricate cloth, steel weaponry
And more wives than I can ever service.
I have proven that living under a bridge
Can expand one’s income, and as long
As I spin the occupation
As part of the knowledge trade,
No one recoils at the details of my employment.

But other trolls know; even if
They guard no bridges of their own
(Instead hammering out lightning, turning
Rain into hail, or livening the woods
With greed and murder and pockets of dark),
That I have learned to be comfortable
Where I am, with what I am,
And with the neat roundness of my life.
Imagine my surprise, my panic,

When, coming this way up my river,
I initially saw the first barge
To ever have a small enough draft
To navigate so far up water:
To enclose crew and cargo and defiance all,
And which might quite possibly
Even against my considered measurements,
Pass whole and without levies
Under my heretofore happy, life’s story, bridge.