The Seven Days of Wander

by Broken Walls Publishing

across endless moon cycles, may be reborn upon their very decay of tooth.

  That in the stretch of their eyes, they may raise to our vision; putting themselveson top of their own shoulders then again then again till they are indeed a small history raised into the present mountain.

  It is our winds buffeting at thin backs that sweep the shadow from their heels and ignite their limbs into the run of stars! For the cities of men are of little prayer, but the Desert is a Song of Giants in Worship.

  Faith moves us, Beggar-Child but our worship may not move faith. Indeed we move gingerly about their toes till we are indeed the dust of all. A mountain can do no more than come to the herd and bray for a courageous hoof.

  But come, haste, let us skirt the village first and I will show the sore before you have a greeting from the cause.

  Over higher hills they walked, he saw the village to his downward left, a couple dozen sturdy stone habitats, specks of humans moving about. Smoke curled from a few pits, a watch pointed to them, sounded a horn. She answered from cupped hands in a rise and fall of hawk cry. The watch waved, his horn a glint of reflected ray. A few below gathered and watched their direction of stride. Then began to head in about the same as if to intercept.

  The beggar and poet descended down a hill and came to gully, perhaps an ancient river bed or glacier gorge which descending continuously towards the plain without any hill interrupting though it did weave like the trail of a snake.

  They followed the gully upward, rounding a few corners till they were coming close to a rock face rising high as the begin of the first mountain.

  They rounded a corner, the banks particularly steep. She halted and panted ahead, crying: "Behold the follies of the all Faithful!" And there a few hundred paces ahead, was carved from the rock face a ball of stone twenty heights of man high. Completely round from heel to top, without wrinkle or chip, smooth as the sense of its hovering intent. Carved in such a way that its gravity leaned to escape the face and be spat into the gully. Where it could begin to ominous rubble downward like a bull gathering wind in its snout.

  It was still held by a single bridge only a few inches thick and long so easily poised was the balance of the skills that had rubbed and chiselled it into potential life.

  The beggar, first a little awed to its size, so unusual is such a grandiose construct from the hands of desert bands.Yet it did recollect some of the things in cities that men point to and decree by their half joints, greater history. Some pointing with their eyes ablaze, some with a gesture that mumbles from their lips.

  He spoke: "What is the belief that formed such an idol?"

  She spat wild at the Stone, her chin lifted quick in contempt: "Belief? The belief of children digging holes in the road for the joy of caressing mud. What do they know of fate till it crashes in limb and axle into the very pits of their pleasure!

  Oh, they came to here in a belief. A belief in life after city. Bearing their stone eyes upon their backs to heal in the Mother's wind. To a seeing faith. In their moving hands, their stone huts, the laughter of their child once only a whimper in alleyed bowels. In the fire of their build, what was unmanly, unwomanly, unhuman became the ash of slapping mortar.

  And yet that purity had even yet an unclean which even my nostrils ripened in sun could not scent.

  They had no walls yet remained a wall. For they called their new destiny: lifting hands. And remained ever faithful to that vision. Though some came to a worship of self, holy in its recline like a long wind hovering, most remained not far in their unidle hearts from builders of men."

  She fell to her knees, her hands rubbing up and down her legs in rapid agitation.

  "What is new hope but the mask laid blink upon prophecy?! As if one reasons in the despair of pursuit that the wolves' cry heralds the ending of night. FOOL I AM. To see only joy, only brotherhood in these fresh carpenters, these stone apprentices. Not to see that it is such with all men, when left restless amongst old tools and crumbled ruins. Creatures of the rise and fall, like all breathers of wind, without worship what can they do but horizon history with fresh paints? Stone.

  Stone was their eyes. Stone was their faith. In a time, when the commune became in its necessity complete, their union turned to me and begged peace for their grasping hands.

  And I, the fool mother, the maddened guide, I, who daily laid a worship of chiselled sentence and scattered word gave them a hand to a legacy blindly done.

  GO TO STONE and declare WORSHIP, I cried. For the parent gives as the parent has and by a child's love, the child is robbed of a higher stance. For does the parent say 'Rise above me and wonder of thy self what I have lost in the shudders of old limbs. Do not gaze so long in stooped eyes for I am now more a thing of what is not, then what is!

  No, rather the parent whispers low to the back of her heart: 'What I am has raised you three feet, then what I dream will raise you another. Take the blood and flesh of my dream, of my worship and it will feed they own growth."

  Her pointed hand raged towards the beggar's face. "IT IS A LIE! HEED, BEGGAR! To lie amongst your child is the greater sin! If you can give them NOTHING, then do not give them less than that.

  Do not lay upon its fragile back the heavy half of what you are not. For they will take that half and be a half of that!

  Better I shrugged these children. Or scattered their tools into the pits of their empty mouths. That hate may have fired a greater purpose than this cold destiny of chipping endless flake."

  Her hand fell. She stared in the dust the way one collects a water's reflection.

  The beggar knelt to her, placed a hand on her shoulder. "But the thing is done and like a poem can it not be undone or forgotten. Are not childrens' hearts more easily loosened to new places than the bitter grip of men's?"

  Her head shook a little sideways. "No, you have not the full understanding. I told them to go to the mountains and purify the artistry of their hands in build and destroy. Gathering my dream in the edge of their tools, their path was innocent. Following this gully, their ascent was without deep breath.

  They would begin a testimony of their history, pictured on the great face of rock.

  By design, they chose first a frame of great circle into which they would have a panorama of artistic evolve, of the faithful singing, bent to the task carts of believe into a chiselled sun, they would etch a permanent record of scorch, of immortality, not given to ask.

  Of that even I had doubt, for while the builders sweat into their narrow groves one upon one, who will birth the destroyers to complete the end? But ends curve away from even those first designs; the tools are swayed by more than hands.

  For only the circle was chipped, deeper, deeper. In the banks of toiling minds the history was unremembered; an image of man-sun was borne.

  They ravished the face to that round, then carried to the back of their sun. Deeper, deeper.

  And in that shadow lower intent moved along the swinging shafts and struck spark upon their molish tempers.

  Some grim eyed genius had a dream of a great ball descending as the Eye of Retribution upon the city. Destroying hundreds in its low swoop of hovel and ornate walls.

  From that dream, nightmares flowered; shadows of an old history shimmered seductive as a new history.

  'Unleash the talon' some decried ' that out of devastation will be borne stronger growth. The walls of men crushed will let man again dwell desert-kin, free and full without hid of sun.'

  Others: "No. Delegate into the city for a new order of freedom and equal heights. Destruction is unnessary. Walls are but the tabernacles to what men kneel most: fear. Use that worship to threaten to reign justice upon their cower of the Great Ball."

  "No" `argued the first if we tell of the Ball, they will want to divert its purpose and then hunt us down for the price of our follies of barter. Peace and union are not a thing to come out of turn landed over but only after all is level in equal horizons.'

  Another arguement came "But what of the dead?
What of the hordes and wild beasts let upon the remaining? Should not calmer future be given first ear? What if a half city's unionfied comes not from piercing brotherhood but more as like the bond: Revenge?"

  `’Dead are the dead whether today or tomorrow. The Ball is the Saviour of men not a man. Just as it was for us. Did we halt the height lest a man fall and die61

  stamen drenched in honey. Even the most brilliant fire has a shimmer of shadow above it, even the purest candle of heart-kind bears the wick of man darkly in its center.’and thus the chatter of mice goes on and on.....”

  The Beggar asked "But why is it so? What breeds such impossibility that men cannot shed from their mirrors all skins of fear and harbour uniqueness into a vessel of change?"

  She shook her strands of hair in a slight tremble of wind and turned to their aim. Her hand gestured for his follow as she replied "I do not know. Years of this hunt yet I do not know. Perhaps it is that they die. And know the intimacy of that death. And drag it behind their will the way an oxcart wheel squeaks a haunt of pursue behind the slumbering sway of dumb. Knowing they cannot flee its harness, perhaps they hold eternity in folded ears.

  Or perhaps in their believe, they first did find Worship. Worship of self but their ears pained to its continuous roar of sacrifice, as if like a trumpet they dwelled to long at its mouthing glories not to the task of a small throat

  out the belly of