[25]
Simon could say, yes,
she looked like a heathen
picture or carved idol
from a forbidden sea-temple;
and Simon might have heard
that this woman from the city,
was devil-ridden or had been;
but Kaspar might call
the devils daemons,
and might even name the seven
under his breath, for technically
Kaspar was a heathen;
he might whisper tenderly, those names
without fear of eternal damnation,
Isis, Astarte, Cyprus
and the other four;
he might re-name them,
Ge-meter, De-meter, earth-mother
or Venus
in a star.
[26]
But it is not fair to compare
Kaspar with Simon;
this Simon is not Simon Peter, of course,
this is not Simon Zelotes, the Canaanite
nor Simon of Cyrenc
nor the later Simon, the sorcerer,
this Simon is Simon, the leper;
but Simon being one of the band,
we presume was healed of his plague,
healed in body, while the other,
the un-maidenly mermaid, Mary of Magdala
was healed of soul; out of her, the Master
had cast seven devils;
but Simon, though healed of body,
was not conditioned to know
that these very devils or daemons,
as Kaspar would have called them,
were now unalterably part of the picture;
they had entered separately or together
the fair maid, perhaps not wantonly,
but crossing the threshold
of this not un-lovely temple,
they intended perhaps to pay homage,
even as Kaspar had done,
and Melchior
and Balthasar.
[27]
And Kaspar (for of course, the merchant was Kaspar)
did not at first know her;
she was frail and slender, wearing no bracelet
or other ornament, and with her scarf
wound round her head, draping her shoulders,
she was impersonal, not a servant
sent on an errand, but, as it were,
a confidential friend, sent by some great lady;
she was discretion itself
in her dark robe and head-dress;
Kaspar did not recognise her
until her scarf slipped to the floor,
and then, not only did he recognise Mary
as the stars had told (Venus in the ascendant
or Venus in conjunction with Jupiter,
or whatever he called these wandering fires),
but when he saw the light on her hair
like moonlight on a lost river,
Kaspar
remembered.
[28]
And Kaspar heard
an echo of an echo in a shell,
in her were forgiven
the sins of the seven
daemons cast out of her;
and Kaspar saw as in a mirror,
another head uncovered and two crowned,
one with a plain circlet, one with a circlet of gems
which even he could not name;
and Kaspar, master of caravans,
had known splendour such as few have known,
and seen jewels cut and un-cut that altered
like water at sun-rise and sun-set,
and blood-stones and sapphires;
we need no detailed statement of Kaspar’s specific knowledge
nor inventory of his own possessions,
all we need to know is that Kaspar
knew more about precious stones than any other,
more even than Balthasar;
but his heart was filled with a more exalted ecstasy
than any valuer over a new tint of rose or smoke-grey
in an Indian opal or pearl; this was Kaspar
who saw as in a mirror,
one head uncrowned and then one with a plain head-band
and then one with a circlet of gems of an inimitable colour;
they were blue yet verging on purple,
yet very blue; if asked to describe them,
you would say they were blue stones
of a curious square cut and set so that the light
broke as if from within; the reflecting inner facets
seemed to cast incalculable angles of light,
this blue shot with violet;
how convey what he felt?
he saw as in a mirror, clearly, O very clearly,
a circlet of square-cut stones on the head of a lady,
and what he saw made his heart so glad
that it was as if he suffered,
his heart laboured so
with his ecstasy.
[29]
It was not solely because of beauty
though there was that too,
it was discovery, discovery that exalted him
for he knew the old tradition, the old, old legend,
his father had had from his grandfather
and his grandfather from his great-grandfather (and so on),
was true; this was never spoken about, not even whispered in secret;
the legend was contained in old signs and symbols,
and only the most painful application could decipher them,
and only the very-few could even attempt to do this,
after boy-hood and youth dedicated
to the rigorous sessions of concentration
and study of the theme and law
of time-relation and retention of memory;
but in the end, Kaspar, too, received the title Magian
(it is translated in the Script, Wise Man).
[30]
As he stooped for the scarf, he saw this,
and as he straightened, in that half-second,
he saw the fleck of light
like a flaw in the third jewel
to his right, in the second circlet,
a grain, a flaw, or a speck of light,
and in that point or shadow,
was the whole secret of the mystery;
literally, as his hand just did-not touch her hand,
and as she drew the scarf toward her,
the speck, fleck, grain or seed
opened like a flower.
[31]
And the flower, thus contained
in the infinitely tiny grain or seed,
opened petal by petal, a circle,
and each petal was separate
yet still held, as it were,
by some force of attraction
to its dynamic centre;
and the circle went on widening
and would go on opening
he knew, to infinity;
but before he was lost,
out-of-time completely,
he saw the islands of the Blest,
he saw the Hesperides,
he saw the circles and circles of islands
about the lost centre-island, Atlantis;
he saw what the sacrosanct legend
said still existed,
he saw the lands of the blest,
the promised lands, lost;
he, in that half-second, saw
the whole scope and plan
of our and his civilization on this,
his and our earth, before Adam.
[32]
And he saw it all as if enlarged under a sun-glass;
he saw it all in minute detail,
the cliffs, the wharves, the citadel,
he saw the ships and the sea-roads crossing
and all the rivers and bridges and dwelling-houses
and the terraces and the built-up inner gardens;
he saw the ma
ny pillars and the Hearth-stone
and the very fire on the Great-hearth,
and through it, there was a sound as of many waters,
rivers flowing and fountains and sea-waves washing the sea-rocks,
and though it was all on a very grand scale,
yet it was small and intimate,
Paradise
before Eve …
[33]
And he heard, as it were, the echo
of an echo in a shell,
words neither sung nor chanted
but stressed rhythmically;
the echoed syllables of this spell
conformed to the sound
of no word he had ever heard spoken,
and Kaspar was a great wanderer,
a renowned traveller;
but he understood the words
though the sound was other
than our ears are attuned to,
the tone was different
yet he understood it;
it translated itself
as it transmuted its message
through spiral upon spiral of the shell
of memory that yet connects us
with the drowned cities of pre-history;
Kaspar understood and his brain translated:
Lilith born before Eve
and one born before Lilith,
and Eve; we three are forgiven,
we are three of the seven
daemons cast out of her.
[34]
Then as he dropped his arm
in the second half-second,
his mind prompted him,
even as if his mind
must sharply differentiate,
clearly define the boundaries of beauty;
hedges and fences and fortresses
must defend the innermost secret,
even the hedges and fortresses of the mind;
so his mind thought,
though his spirit was elsewhere
and his body functioned, though himself,
he-himself was not there;
and his mind framed the thought,
the last inner defence
of a citadel, now lost,
it is unseemly that a woman
appear disordered, dishevelled,
it is unseemly that a woman
appear at all.
[35]
What he thought was the direct contradiction
of what he apprehended,
what he saw was a woman of discretion,
knotting a scarf,
and an unpredictable woman
sliding out of a door;
we do not know whether or not
he himself followed her
with the alabaster jar; all we know is,
the myrrh or the spikenard, very costly, was Kaspar’s,
all we know is that it was all so very soon over,
the feasting, the laughter.
[36]
And the snow fell on Hermon,
the place of the Transfiguration,
and the snow fell on Hebron
where, last spring, the anemones grew,
whose scarlet and rose and red and blue,
He compared to a King’s robes,
but even Solomon, He said,
was not arrayed like one of these;
and the snow fell on the almond-trees
and the mulberries were domed over
like a forester’s hut or a shepherd’s hut
on the slopes of Lebanon,
and the snow fell
silently … silently …
[37]
And as the snow fell on Hebron,
the desert blossomed as it had always done;
over-night, a million-million tiny plants
broke from the sand,
and a million-million little grass-stalks
each put out a tiny flower,
they were so small, you could hardly
visualize them separately,
so it came to be said,
snow falls on the desert;
it had happened before,
it would happen again.
[38]
And Kaspar grieved as always,
when a single twin of one of his many goats was lost—
such a tiny kid, not worth thinking about,
he was such a rich man, with numberless herds, cattle and sheep—
and he let the long-haired mountain-goats
return to the pasture earlier than usual,
for they chafed in their pens, sniffing the air
and the flowering-grass; and he himself watched all night
by his youngest white camel whose bearing was difficult,
and cherished the foal—it looked like a large white owl—
under his cloak and brought it to his tent
for shelter and warmth; that is how the legend got about
that Kaspar
was Abraham.
[39]
He was a very kind man
and he had numberless children,
but he was not Abraham come again;
he was the Magian Kaspar;
he said I am Kaspar,
for he had to hold on to something;
I am Kaspar, he said when a slender girl
holding ajar, asked deferentially
if she might lower it into his well;
I am Kaspar; if her head were veiled
and veiled it almost always would be,
he would remember, though never
for a moment did he quite forget
the turn of a wrist as it fastened a scarf,
the saffron-shape of the sandal,
the pleat of the robe, the fold of the garment
as Mary lifted the latch and the door half-parted,
and the door shut, and there was the flat door
at which he stared and stared,
as if the line of wood, the rough edge
or the polished surface or plain,
were each significant, as if each scratch and mark
were hieroglyph, a parchment of incredible worth
or a mariner’s map.
[40]
And no one will ever know
whether the picture he saw clearly
as in a mirror was pre-determined
by his discipline and study
of old lore and by his innate capacity
for transcribing and translating
the difficult secret symbols,
no one will ever know how it happened
that in a second or a second and half a second,
he saw further, saw deeper, apprehended more
than anyone before or after him;
no one will ever know
whether it was a sort of spiritual optical-illusion,
or whether he looked down the deep deep-well
of the so-far unknown
depth of pre-history;
no one would ever know
if it could be proved mathematically
by demonstrated lines,
as an angle of light
reflected from a strand of a woman’s hair,
reflected again or refracted
a certain other angle—
or perhaps it was a matter of vibration
that matched or caught an allied
or exactly opposite vibration
and created a sort of vacuum,
or rather a point in time—
he called it a fleck or flaw in a gem
of the crown that he saw
(or thought he saw) as in a mirror;
no one would know exactly
how it happened,
least of all Kaspar.
[41]
No one will know exactly how it came about,
but we are permitted to wonder
if it had possibly something to do
with the vow he had made—
well, it wasn’t exactly a vow,
an i
dea, a wish, a whim, a premonition perhaps,
that premonition we all know,
this has happened before somewhere else,
or this will happen again—where? when?
for, as he placed his jar on the stable-floor,
he remembered old Azar … old Azar
had often told how, in the time of the sudden winter-rain,
after the memorable autumn-drought,
the trees were mortally torn,
when the sudden frost came;
but Azar died while Kaspar was still a lad,
and whether Azar’s tale referred
to the year of the yield of myrrh,
distilled in this very jar,
or another—Kaspar could not remember;
but Kaspar thought, there were always two jars,
the two were always together,
why didn’t I bring both?
or should I have chosen the other?
for Kaspar remembered old, old Azar muttering,
other days and better ways, and it was always maintained
that one jar was better than the other,
but he grumbled and shook his head,
no one can tell which is which,
now your great-grandfather is dead.
[42]
It was only a thought,
someday I will bring the other,
as he placed his jar
on the floor of the ox-stall;
Balthasar had offered the spikenard,
Melchior, the rings of gold;
they were both somewhat older than Kaspar
so he stood a little apart,
as if his gift were an after-thought,
not to be compared with theirs;
when Balthasar had pushed open the stable-door
or gate, a shepherd was standing there,
well—a sort of shepherd, an older man with a staff,
perhaps a sort of night-watchman;
as Balthasar hesitated, he said, Sir,
I am afraid there is no room at the Inn,
as if to save them the trouble of coming further,
inquiring perhaps as to bedding-down
their valuable beasts; but Balthasar
acknowledged the gentle courtesy of the man
and passed on; and Balthasar entered the ox-stall,
and Balthasar touched his forehead and his breast,
as he did at the High Priest’s side
Trilogy (New Directions Classic) Page 7
