Besides, except that he can think, he would scratch a delicate scribe. (Laughing). Are you numb to a reply or implying dumb?
Scribean: As you have so wisely spoke, King Hindus, thought provokes bad writing. Those who write are
burdened to remain good funnels but bad containers; they are the passage of eternity, not the cup.
King Hindus: True; the denser the matter, the quicker should sink the pen. But like all crimes, the witness begs no wits and thereby there is no turning of left or girth by ungoverned
hands.
Scribean: True, Sire, reins have no place on a headless horse.
King Hindus: I am shocked, Scribean, my faith in your impeccability has received a blow! I am alarmed! Is there an ordeal that can be done for scribes to a similar purpose of render as is done for eunuchs?
Scribean: Yes, Your Nobleness, I believe it is called: praise. Praise easily drains the mind of any lofty thought.
King Hindus (laughing): What a scribe does not deserve, he is given and that bears better inscription. How is this?
Scribean: The quill is only as mighty as the drawing bow and that only as strong as the string taut of drawn about the scribe's neck! When the book is kept from brains, it flows from the quill in more rhythmic pulse.
King Hindus: So it is the same! The eunuch and the scribe are trusted amongst a king's thoughts and a king's wives for the virtue of either is safe before the flaccid organ!
It is said: Blessed are the impotent and fools for they have no love of thinking and do not think of love. King Hindus: You make it sound as if the less of a man, the better of man.
Scribean: In your own immortal words; Sire, those who would not sink should discard thicker things.
King Hindus: Hah! Well, spoken, There seems to be more of a beggar in you than before. I should allow you trade quills for rags and throw you the way of much hungrier philosophies!
At this the Scribe trembled and bowed low three times to the king's laughter.
The Sixth Day
As was commanded the Beggar had been fed, called and discarded to the dawn's open cradle. The day has such hopes for these discards left or spilled to the street's centre. There She is first upon their flung embrace, they receive first her warming kiss not any who are still huddled behind secure walls. These sprawled forms are the day's virgins; they rise to Her hand; their ears shake to a whisper to thought lost in a night's silent song: the dream. Did they dream of such awakenings of man? But the day begs them "no, no" remember them now. Marry the light and the union will birth man before delight." But even spoken, the rags, the bones, the moans and creaks reclose the eyes and call the hope, dream and begin journey the living mare. They are ice now, their steps the melts of a fatal slope. She leaves, this kindling dawn, to another. The beggar did not sleep well.
The failure of the slaves haunted his ears for whenever he came close to sleep he would hear a swish noise with the plunk of a melon tossed to a basket. Twenty times he heard such and then he was allowed a troubled rest. The body curled its reward in peace. It had lived another day, its reward in ironic price was sleep; as if one rewards a thief for returning the emptied purse.
But the mind rests not so easy for its rewards and plunder of a day's contest are not the simple nay or yes of a heart still beating.
It is as a judge who retires the court scene to weight the day's sentence in more repose with less scatters of distraction by the illogics and banters of emotional rabble. Here, in sleep, the mind sits with voices, some gentle, some ancient, some fierce and speaks of the trials this day. The language is image. Paintings born, gone, reborn to the wall of the skull, or delicate carvings of sparks, wind stars vanishing in the tale of a tail. Some of the language a mind will remember, or choose to remember, or be allowed to carry out of an inner chamber. This remnant or conclusion we greet as dream. Thus the dream is to the language want the cup is to the well. Neither can man live in a well or remain long repleted with a cup. Sleep is the well worn path between such places.
The dream the Beggar held to his eyes this dawn was like all dreams: a vessel of understand but for the broken side; at rear; out of the back. A vase complete to the eye yet the ear undeceived notes the wind hiss from the top andescape.
This unseen beckon, the hands around the vase, the fingertips note the voice, the gap; yet turn and turn nothing, no hole, the sides heal round round yet the back remains its larger fracture.
This is a dream, for the dream molds of the day in what was, what is and what will be. What will be is the crack. For all that spills unto a day must escape or the dream will choke leaden upon the mind swimming their sleep. For it is to the future that all spills to and therefore no man must drag the day's folly's and winnings into tomorrow like a dead debtor tied putrid upon his back. He will flounder in the anchor of his past before a day's harbour won.
The voices mold the vase, yet discard the future piece for the telling weaves the day and, thereby, the future lost. What will be must remain the virgin tightly veiled till the wedded day when the groom raises his pinning hopes to beauty or hideous. Whatever 'she' is, hope has sealed fate amongst the expectant feast and ready dance. He rapines himself upon the furtive scent of desire; this dream hesitant to lose a lover to his dark of unsated despair; lose the lover to night. Night wraps her cool limbs round the limp sweat of his passion exhausted; her strands brush the disappointment rippling his skin; that mouth anguish opening and closing to a silent wail: "She is not the one, not the one". Night forgives always his infidelity in dream after dream; always allows him explore her skirts for another dream to be bought, tried and all sing again: "She is not the one, not the one."
These are dreams then; two thirds a hint; a driving man's vague of point; a map in shreds of destiny; the mumbled path; the glint of flash flared on mountain side; a half step in cracked granite clay; a skull jawed to oblivion. These are dreams; the images of voices handing a mind their decree of the day's sweep and battle's cost. Yet the plans for new contest are not cast in pointing flag till dawn is well heated.
The man not to know till a sun's break has inflamed the bridge of retreat back into Night. And in burning, despair and courage are alloyed into man and the dream is pathed over like cobblestones sagged in rough abuse; the face of old dregs mumbling toothless of fire past suitors. Only the flower of their memory is not dried to wither in overtread.
So the circle Night.dream.memory.day.man.courage.voices.despair.attempt.Night.dream...the wheel spoked of raised fists, the hub the eye, yellow and pressed, as it guides its trail through the darkest dust of millennia. For the gods or fates do not send the wheel rolling as a man propelled from a palm into a running stance but rather spin the man flat upon the dust, to revolve over outflung with eye coast downward or upward. That justice of outlook dependant on the initial flip when the man coin was gambled to its destiny.
These wheels revolving, butting, smashing upon one and another, or churning off alone to rut across the scorpion's bed; these wheels to plunge cliff or make small whirl down into seas; no matter tis no matter except to see that there are minute universes revolving about a vision core and in that may make absolute claim the rights of existence as any larger universe in its path, dream, or wander. Fate, in allowing man motion, bestows upon him both the hope of a universe and its distance of succeed.
The Beggar walked towards the mountains in his dream.
In it was a crucifix. A naked man impaled by nails stretched bloodied upon it. The face unknown, indeed was hollow, fog mist, dense and in that density, a foreboding as chilling to bile as the iron mask of any terror descending with sword in the black startle of sleep disturbed before closed again to death.
The fog rolled towards the cross dangling its Meat, it rolled as a cat gathers speed in its pursuit of prey. Just as the fog grasped the stem of this unnatural plant, a dove appeared in the cave of the man's face. It unfurled itself and flew away seconds before the fog shrouded all.
Shortly the fog rolled back. Sam
e man, silent, faceless in the embrace of sky.
Three times the fog rolled and ebbed. Three times a bird flew from the featureless skull. The dove, then an eagle, then a crow.
When the fog spilled back away the fourth time, the man was gone. The cross remained, the blood still glistening, still pooling from its fountain of nail to a ground's lap.
A woman appeared in rags of some distant brightness or colours long since rubbed away by either hard soil or obsessive cleansing. She is not young, nor old. She is of that agelessness of peasant woman where the bloom of twenty-five does not truly decay till about fifty unless the hand of man deems it to be crushed premature.
She has a dry mop constructed of a long pole and hair tied in a bundle at the one end. With this she attempts to wipe the blood off the cross. It smears the mop strands crimson but the blood is too leaden, too stiff in the cake of air, to be lifted up with such dryness of a endeavour.
The woman is dismayed; she weeps; and in weeping holds the mop below to basin her tears. But though her sadness goes long, the dampened mop still is not soaked enough as she tries again, again.
A small crowd is now seen at the half incline on the hill which levels to the cross. Men and women of ill fit and random description, who huddle and whisper from time to time, point.
She goes to them
The Seven Days of Wander Page 51
