ears. And better mouth. The gazelle birthed here, the jackal supped. The woman taken in its shadow, the man flailed upon its toothy back, their points smoothed by an eternity's feast.
The knife rapes its virtuous back, man. Oh so quick to howl is a stone heart behind flaccid roll of flesh but slow, slow draws the breath of liquid heart under hard shell. Yet, man, if we but await but await, our lives, more lives, if we but build and wait generations about this tone enraged a howl will indeed spew long day from this! Believe it!
The pain of stone will rage out in fire blood and rain the generations a thousand, thousand killing knifes upon their flesh. Their world pillared of flesh will tremble and fall fit into the carnivore dust. Believe it!, man, the knife has reaped resurrection, time only awaits the spill of days, a dance of rock in revolution.
The good brute slumbers till pricked; a calm sea rests till whistled for by the wind.”
Cautious he spoke "Forgive the dense of my incline but there is a puzzle still buzzed solid at my hear. That others believe and thus move or contain their heart but more stone will not lighten my stride."
She nimbled a step off the rock, walked to him then sat as a lotus flower before him.
"Man, listen. All has been and is and will be stone for such as you. The others, your children, even I, though of greater strain, your child. As child, we are given shelter, for the pale wind has an appetite drunk upon innocence. We are given something to believe. Chose, seldom, though there are times of unburden for new burden.
But, Man, oh so emptied man, you have chosen nothing. For we believe, we breath the belief of how, mad, love, blood, hate passion, Gods, death, power, child, universe. The child seed finds root and thus holds before the wind of Chaos, of unbeing. From an unbirth in cold, the womb of Nothing itself, that beginning warmth blood of being spews us out to grasp Something. And build life around it as the sand crests to the rock. Without the rock, our Belief would remain as moving grains, nothing, endless shift of time. Children unborn.
But why, Man, have you nothing? Because you have chose, been chosen, for Nothing. Philosophers, true to all emptiness. A prophet of prophets. You must believe in belief and belief is nothing onto itself. You CANNOT love, hate, blood, passion, mad, eat, drink of any belief. Yours the way of long tongue inches from pool only the crusted eyes can drink, lapping without sensation.
Man, your stride is not heavy for the way, there is no way, you are there. Look upon thy back, Nothing! Yet there bears the world of Something, of all child in Belief.
THIEF, DO NOT STEAL FROM YOUR CHILDREN!
That you must bear this believe in belief cannot be unshackled, lightened. Do not pluck their belief into your hands, your scaly mouth. Do not hang such upon your manhood, or stuff your ears to pitch the whines of abyss away.
You must bear Belief and thus hold bloody Worlds from the endless you at your own feet, the catacombs returning child into a darkness of unbelief. You are the stem of the rose, man, your hands thorns, your feet roots to be endlessly plucked from dust and regrown inching across this destiny of bridge."
To say dismay filled the Beggar's face as he understood a little, is to say night is but a shadow of light, that is Hope sometimes attempts seduction with much too much understatement.
The Beggar held the pieces of his expressed composure in his hands and whispered through his palms: "But of what is the purpose of this belief of another's belief? For if that gives a beggar's life, of what task is his bowl?"
"Your bowl is doubt, man. To scrap rough upon the hides of disbelief, flilled and emptied with the world's open sores of decay. To gorge disease from the leper and leave the half-limbs healthy of their belief. To slop sin off the sinner and leave Innocence breath. Doubt is the knife probing for steel arrowed into dead flesh but the sharp barb is the living to be left, not the gangerous boilings of hate.
Whoever gathers among you, whoever lays their salt at your tongue. You as the Doubtfull reaper must lay upon their brow with fierce blows till a skull flowers out buried resolve; then you have healed and will rewander. You do not judge believe, only unbury it; sentence, persecution is for believers, healers do not point only beckon.
Yet from this rapine of healing, man, you are hated. Always, like the cold death which sings a huddle inward at soul, your eyes are scarcely angel to dim hesitators who cringe at your light drumming towards their walls.
Never forgotten, never forgiven.
For those of a little ash left from the fire of your Doubt, must rebuild. True at believe, like naked skins flailed, scattered across leagues, the raw muscle, the exposed organs must relearn again old smotherings, old lies or set their long teeth into the wind and stay true blood of Belief. All depends of whether the belief is a thing of snake's nightly lick or a day warm to the embrace of delicate reach.
But none the less, no one praises the time of grim reaping, of storming, of chasm encircling whether prisoner freed or guard toppled.
It is your destiny, Beggar-man. Go fill your bowl with Nothing, the WORLD clawed ever deeply your graceful back, like a savage thing you would carry for its broken limbs. Let your mouth, hands, ears, eyes, bowl with their everlasting hate that your feast will then starve their wretchedness into fruitfull love.
Man, you are condemned to believe solely in their belief and cannot doubt it!"
The truth of her baring give final puncture to his heart; he folded forward into a half curl at her lap and wept in that endless place of furthest misery, where solace is but an observe from distance horizons behind.
Somewhere from the sobs and half breaths, his mind still ventured for reason, yet so feeble a philosophy he would have shamed it silent but from the smallness, the tender innocence of its voice "Why me?"
She did not laugh at such crude thinking. Her hands still holding the trembles of his head, rubbing the tenseness of his neck and shoulders.
She replied. "If one dwells quiet, slow enough, in unmoving, unheaving, in the dark still, you will hear in time, if slowed to its own pace, the rock give single cry. So small a thing flies do not flight but a cry none the less. For thousands upon thousands of years, it has dreamed to run the night or gallop the sun just an hour, a moment, a footstep. But it cannot and weeps.
If you can tell rock why it cannot run, it may be then wise enough to tell you of your Doubt. But none can. Nor I. In that it is your Brother. Though I am Woman, Mother, Sister, Lover, some comforts I cannot give even from hand or body or heart. Unto man. Just as men cannot do onto woman.
Go to your Brother, Man and share your burdens."
From her lap to the rock, Beggar crawled four limbed a trail of tears dampened between the twin shallow ruts made through the sand burnt to near ash colour by a sun noon in its blaze.
He crawled upon the rock and prostrate began beating his fists upon it, his sobs giving to wailings then strangely following the beat of stone and flesh pound into a chant grieve in some guttural language, neither he nor rock nor woman understood but understood back to the beginnings of Doubt.
The sun shifted, again, glint brought the knife still at harbour in a Brother's sheath of stone to view.
The chants stopped, a long moan began.
The Beggar rose on his knees, his hands half above his head, open to wind. The right arm fell, reached at the radiant knife, plucked it away. The left hand gathered both in its grip and turned a deadly will towards a begging heart.
His arms bunched, his eyes closed to all but the great sweet 'yes' that floated across his mind broken wide with unreason, his head nodded once slightly downward to give blessing and the blade drove towards its heart of prey.
A slender leg cut the air across his chest, her instep striking wrists, the knife turned from its momentum, flying from grip and rattled off a Brother's back to sand rest. Alive, though the knife had managed a kiss of red strip along his chest, the Beggar opened his eyes to harsh light.
Four long breaths, the trembling of his skin began cooling in the sun.
He looked t
hen upon the Woman, her face blank, awaiting death's cheated response.
A grin from his face followed "Brothers play rough games in wide streets."
She did not grin. "No, truly, he loves you very much to try to give such a gift. It is I, Mother, who am cruel and will not allow that pleasant long sleep. And drag you awake to fates driven other ways. Forgive me but you cannot be spared". At that she retrieved her knife.
He got down from the rock, his legs stumbled a little to her, then supported, he replied as he kissed her brow, "I understand now to the end of my understanding. Take me now to the full place of no understanding, that I may lift new light from under the shadow of long doubts.”
Onward they walked towards the hills, their heights rising in anticipation.
And as the undulated horizon gathered around their view like a closing hand, her own tale of journey was set free into the small air between them.
She had spilled to sand and filth, born under the shadow of a reclined camel. Her mother had died given her that passage, her pain rising out of a throat racked with pain; given to a god's name but recalling only the ever circle of desert kites.
Her father drunk and wild before, after, during. A towering, bearded cruel shadow that gave no milder touch even upon this frail gift for his immortal grasping. A Herder-Breeder needs sons for their labour under the bequeath of fist; two-legged issue has no swell of
The Seven Days of Wander Page 69
