trapped behind. Add more!
The flow depletes! Add more! You the cook of a never ending broth of dead, dying and a few escaping.
But this is what men say. What they say is of little value to the why of this
doing.
Why is the why of the original three, he of greed, he of ignore and he of despair. Thus the bowl is held from spill
on a three legged stool. Yet, let one give , one look , one receive, and poverty is not known amongst three brothers.
A dreamy thought, but unsound. for it is simple: what was, remains. If men saw the Valley dug in the grave of their greed, they will see it stay the grave of their ignore.
My friend, were you to shout 'why don't men change?" you answer your own question.
As if thus to declare ,"Men don't change why." The why stays eternal, the whens and whats bred from its foul cavern, come out bearing the hats of greed and ignore; both heavy; slid over eyes cooled guiltless on the night's look.
We here in the hovels, succour only this dignity. Curs, we can chose to whimper the full length of our chain, begging in the stone face of oblivious masters or lie a dull eyed sluggish reaction of a slack leash.
We prefer dignity, though a meagre feast.
Dignity in the disregard of charity's mocking chance.
Death before a lick at slapping hands; a fist full of tiny choking of bones.
So friend, no offense, your words may be the winds of truth to make majestic lions roar beyond the rim but here they drop to whispers unlikely to make dogs bark."
Beggar: "My friend, your wisdom is rare."
The Man: " No, call it not wisdom. Wisdom is found. Here is only a vast knowledge of emptiness. What else would a man do with hollow eyes, silent ears, empty bowels but decorate them with the trappings around him. A gorging of phantoms in imaginary feasts. Outside the Valley, men are wise in their full bellies; Inside the Valley, men are keen to the marrow of jutting bones.
We of nothing know all of nothing and are in that: complete. Wise men of something know something and are in that: complete. Fear only those of something who seek nothing or those of nothing who demand something. Alas for the world, they are both of the greatest of the world.
Beggar: Do you mean you are complete in your poverty?
The Man with again a hearty chuckle replied: Ask instead if I am completely in poverty and the answer flutters to an easy yes. Your question invokes more grappling things, more delicate, more reluctant to offer witness. I have no acceptance, nor no grovel of my poverty today. To hunt for my children's bread as a rat scurries for food is not a father's wish. Neither will I bow to man or gods for the gift of this mud palace or my ragged pants or my very skin.
I would easily kill anyone to be not poor ,except another poor man. To murder for wealth is a great crime, true, but to murder for a month's bread ...who but the hungry should be allowed judge?
But no matter. What I mean to say is a father can find no peace in his children's empty swollen bellies; love holds cruel in that thin armed embrace. No matter how endearing, love for a wife calmed in its passions for fear the birth of another mouth, there is no peace in such things sated. For a man to find peace in all this is to find a heart petrified at birth.
Yet madness too nudges constant to burst outward from the aching heart. Yet a man here in madness is as little use as the man stoned in his chest. Madness, however is a chewed disease. A man knaws upon the stretch , the sinews of Time's bread. The endlessness of his poverty..yesterday, this day, all his tomorrows. This the man knows what the leashed dog does not know. That the chain was, is and will remain.
The dog lies content; if the chain is removed, the dog walks away.
The mad man slobbers and raves; if the chain is removed he holds the chain in his hand and raves all the more.
I heed the lay of the dog. My poverty is lost to the dusk. If it is found at dawn, I am not surprised but neither does despair wring my hair for I bear only the want of the day. I neither expect nor desire nor deny poverty tomorrow.
Thus I am both angered and content to know the shackle of my own and my family's want. Dreams are not pursued, neither do
regrets remain. I am keen and sharp only to the pursuits of a day, none here have surplus for more.
Beggar: "Forgive me, friend, I mean no offence but your words are like the words of a hawk. I look for no plead of innocence but surely you seek some demand or solace for this place dug in evil purpose. Yet you speak of this world in a language of eye and claw amongst eye and claw. I admit much beauty is lost to the
flight and dive of keen hunters, but is there no recourse but these thoughts?"
The Man: " Again, Beggar, round and round, you too like a hawk circling my thoughts for a softer tidbit. There are none I tell you. All you see is of toughened gruel; meat stone hard to the sun and salt of tears. If I were not thus, I would not be. This place is as it is, thus I am as it is. How long would the
soft, timid last in these burrows? When I am in the heavens . I will have heavenly thoughts, here is not the heavens.
But enough of the serious, let me ask you a riddle of my father's which plagues me even still: The Rule of the World is:
The more you want to keep something, more they will want to take it aw ay. So that the less and less you want 'something, the
more and more you can keep it. Is not then the end result true, that when you want nothing, you can keep everything?
The Beggar: "Or if you don't want something , they'll make you take it."
The Man (laughing): "Good, good. Extended that to the point
if you don't want everything, they'll make you bear everything."
Beggar: "So that he who wishes for nothing is the same as he who
doesn't want everything."
The Man: "No, not quite, for he who doesn't want everything is
miserable because everything is forced upon him; yet he who wanted nothing can keep everything but is indifferent to
its existence."
Beggar: "No, I disagree, for he wanted nothing but now
everything is in his way same as the man who did not want
everything."
The Man: "But have we not erred? The man who wanted nothing,
would not they give him something to take away his nothing?"
Beggar: "The more they give, the less his nothing till he has
everything and despairs of nothing?"
The Man: "No, No, for there is an end to a man's decline but no
end to man's greed. Just as a thin man can be only so thin yet there is no limit to a fat man! If our thin man is content in his
nothing, what limit is there to everything?"
Beggar: "I disagree, the thin man will still breathe, there is
no limit to his seek of nothing since he dies and ceases to be in our riddle. Each breath is something and hence the man is not secured of his nothing."
The Man. "Well you know the Valley, friend, for many despise their own breath. But of our riddle , can we not conclude that punishment for nothing is everything, whereas the punishment for everything is nothing ?"
The Beggar: "Has this not stemmed from a system of greed which is to
take away from one man's hold to another man's clutch?"
The Man: " What is charity, then?"
Beggar: "The opposite of greed, to give unto men."
The Man: " Is charity to give what you want to keep or take what
you don't want to keep?"
Beggar: "Both, I would say. For you can give alms or take away
disease."
The Man: "What of ignorance?"
Beggar: "The same as disease, for that is what it is. No man desires ignorance."
The Man: "If I had a three-legged mule with a weighted pack terrible in its burden, what would I do then? Give it a new leg but it remains ignorant? Or cut off the other front leg and teach
it that it is now a man, open its eyes to its desti
ny; to go as well as it can with this burden eternal on its spine?"
Beggar: "But, my friend, would it not be better to remove its burdens first of all: Unslip the bridal of its tyranny?"
The Man: " Yes, you have it. Thus you find the folly of
philosophy amongst brutes squirming under stones. Those who bring the charity of vision must first sit under the shadow of great burdens, if they can thus see in the dim, they can speak in the dim. Thus no man is mocked with an address of manhood while he wears the hooves of oppression. Your thoughts in these streets
are as pepper in rough fodder; better to speak dumb amongst the mules.
It is the master who can relieve the mules; best take away the ignorance first. He who has everything must be taught to see Nothing; that is the
enlightenment of true charity."
Such had the conversation gone most of the night with the Beggar's young son being given soft chastisement.
That wide vision cannot see all that lives in narrow streets.
That change within can be squeezed and squirmed and held to a tight shell.
Only a violent cracking can release growth; mild tappings of beckoning are too meagre for the task.
Change for the middle men is a possible thing of waver; for the poor or mildly rich less so; for the very rich or very poor impossible. Both are bound to need as many fetters at arm and ankle.
In this they are brothers. Or
mules of want. It is only the rarity of the rich which delights the observer, only the seething number of greatly poor which horrifies. Their bondage to unchange the same. Yet be cautious, the man says, only one deserves pity for the other eats well in his miserable calling.
All these things the young Beggar had collected and viewed again as the narrow alley began spill forth
The Seven Days of Wander Page 36
