nobody walks alone (w. blake)
I remember myself an eternity ago. Young and impatient I was, and just discovering I was sapient.
I was a part of the large species whose common name is forgotten by now. They all knew us then, they did.
It was an eternity ago, and that’s another world. Aeons have passed since then. Yet, there are aeons to come. Aeons have to be there, still and motionless, as the times of sorrow, aeons have to go by.
I stand here, between the earth and skies. Motionless, quiet and still.
If the winds don’t blow too hard on me.
If the rains don’t cut too deep in me.
If the lightnings do not splinter me.
I stand.
I was a part of an earlier creation. I still remember. It was a big and a strong hand who put me into existence.
I got started. Aeons ago, I did. The mountains moved, the cliffs were set by the sea-shore, rocks were molten and hardened again. The seas came and dried up, things grew and changed.
Some say, things were born and died. I saw them change, not die. I saw them grow and lie down and go into another life. Each time it’s going to be different. Each time something new. Like changing coats. Maybe.
There was something in he air, those days. Something was in the air for aeons. The whole eternity flying past like a breath.
Those who breathe will know how desperately a breath is needed, how swiftly it is taken in and how fast it must be let go. And they will also be aware of it that otherwise there is an end to the life process so precious, so loved, so desired.
There was a Presence in the air, a Presence Creating, a Presence Moulding, a Presence Sustaining. We all knew it, those days. We were unwearied and strong and full of life and memory of creation. And gratitude; yes, gratitude was flowing from us like a stream from a mountain well. We all breathed, I breathed in joy and gratitude to that Presence we knew was there.
That Hand Created someone else. They moved, they ran and jumped and were named our Brothers. We took to each other in that brotherly fashion we were taught. I saw them be little and weaker and less protected and as full of life as it can be. And we took no heed of danger or injustice or anything else as there was nothing to fear in that Presence that breathed and was and lived around us.
I was as young as the whole world around me, and expecting and waiting for another wonder to happen, and never having the thought that it might be something harmful or…
They were introduced to us as our Stewards, they were.
The weakest of all, the least mobile, the most incredibly feeble creatures they were.
A fair folk and beloved by the Creator, they were.
And we loved them.
They met someone other on their way. Or that’s what it looked like.
That was the first time I learned the meaning of the word ‘blood’, I mean, that liquid that oozes slowly taking the life-force along to a journey unknown. That ‘blood’ came to me, it did, slow and painful and accusing. From there I know the word ‘accuse’, too.
And then they walked away from us. they somehow got lost. Or could not find their way, or… Maybe, they had another companion to lead them on other paths.
With all the life-experience, I cannot tell.
I looked at them and they did not see me.
I called out to them and they did not hear me.
Their companion had stopped their ears. Or hearts. Or both.
We heard each other with our hearts, those days, we knew each other from our hearts.
We all had a bit of the Heart of the Creator in us, we did, those days.
For communication, they say, it was meant. For acknowledgement of the Presence all around us. Like another organ. Just for that.
Then aeons passed, with the ‘blood’ pouring in rivers, in seas, in oceans… They were blind and not willing to listen to the Voice we all knew once. Or to each other.
For what I saw, was, that there were some people who sometimes knew the Voice. And us. And rejoiced and wept with us and the Creator.
They wanted their fellows to go back.
That’s what I saw, I did not understand their tongue of mouth and none of them spoke the language of the Heart. I saw them pour the ‘blood’ of the hearing ones on me. Thick and slow, and painful and accusing, it came to me. What was I supposed to do with it? What was I supposed to do with the soul of those who heard me and were called my Stewards, and could not defend themselves?
I turned my eye to the Presence.
I put a question to Him.
And He responded.
It was the same thick substance I knew so well. It dripped and poured and came and went and Was.
Like the Song of Creation, only slow, and painful and accused.
I did not know what had happened to the Presence around me.
It was not there. He was not there. For a moment. Or an aeon. Or eternity. Does not matter. We died , were dying with the Absence.
Between the sky an earth, an act of New Creation was conducted.
It was then, a world ago, that it happened.
It was then and is there still now, that Blood; it undeafens the eyes, it unblindens the hearts, if you trust it.
Do you hear, Stewards?
Behold, the Night:
In seemingly quiet paths of ice, the wind moves with ease.
The air does not allow mists to rise too steeply. All mists gradually turn to crystals covering a multitude of tree-twigs and wires.
See, how it happens, in the night, a walker’s steps are heard beyond the range of vision. Each step ascertains the impossibility of balance between the forces in the whole Universe.
How is that? I wonder. How come, the world is different from what we think it should be. Footsteps thunder and squeak on the ice-covered, wind-swept, sand-bespotted road…
After the short summer, a never-ending winter. After the rains of July, the snows of November. Time condenses like so much vapour out of the air. I open my eyes and look into the flamboyant glory of golden leaves, I blink, and behold! there is the nakedness and austerity of the early winter.
We walk. We explore the nightly world, frost-bound and obscure. The cold of our hearts serves as a balance to the cold we perceive in the wind and the winter.
In the middle of the glacial night, I put a candle in my window. To light the way of those lost in their home-coming from the remotest outskirts of this nocturnal endless winter.
king’s fool
There would be no wisdom but for the endless generations of fools, clowns and harlequins that have trodden the paths of human antipathy, sympathy and mercy. Therefore, the below inscribed, bears the title indicated.
KING’S FOOL
BEGINNING OF THE COMEDY
A stage. Curtains drawn. Two hands part the cloth. A figure appears, clad half in red, half in black, wearing a cap with a number of tails with bells attached to them.
The Harlequin walks up close to the Camera. Close-up: the Harlequin looks straight into the Camera. You look straight into the Harlequin’s eyes.
This is only a game, boy. Somebody’s always the winner. Somebody got to have it. All of it, the whole of it. It’s called the Jackpot, the Big Draw, the Victory. And there is always the lucky one, the one out of the crowd, boy. The one who’s taken the Chance.
A close-up. One of the bells of the Harlequin’s cap swinging noiselessly. No sound perceivable by the ear. Soundlessness represented by the silent swing of the bell’s tongue. Behold the Absence of Sound.
Maybe, kid, none of us will live to see a better day. The better days always pass away unnoticed. We complain a lot, interfere a good deal with what we think are the forces of Nature, and then die. And none of us even notices that among our bad and sad and hard Todays there are splendid times. It’s only when our Today has become a Yesterday, that we start calling it good. Not good but better, kid. The better days are always those well before our time and memory.
Panoramic view of a hilly place. On top of a hill, a flag-stalk. Flag drooping loosely. Very faint wind not able to move the flag. A tiny figure at the foot of the hill topped by the flag. The figure tries to embrace all the view in one glance. It is the figure of the Harlequin, at an enormous distance.
I always sing at work, boy. It helps nothing really. It does not lift up the spirits. It does not make the job easier or less complicated. In one word, singing does not help organise in any way.
I always sing at work, kid, because work demands singing. Nothing sophisticated meant, kid. It’s just that work and song go together.
A view of a distant ruins of a castle in the background. A large puddle in the foreground. Rubbish all over the place.
A close-up of a broken beer bottle. Label visible. A hand reaches to lift it.
A close-up of a bag of rubbish by a leg. The leg is disconnected from the human body. No blood visible.
A distant figure of the Harlequin in the background between the ruins and the rubbish. The Harlequin wears Red and Black for the occasion.
See these, kid. These are daffodils. They come up every spring. For a few days, they blossom. They make the world jolly, even if it rains. When it rains, no matter, water or tears, remember daffodils. They live to give – joy of remembrance.
When it is pouring with tears, kid, remember that you are a daffodil. You live to give joy. Of remembrance. Do not forget, kid.
A close-up. the back of the Harlequin. Two of the cap-bells touching the shoulders. One of the cap-tails is red. The other one is black. The Harlequin is departing. The bells tinkle with every step.
A view of the hilly place. The flag-stalk is broken. The wind is carrying the flag, spread. Half of the flag is red, the other half is black. The Camera follows the flag till it turns into a tiny dot against the overwhelming blueness of the skies.
Be real, kid. There is lots of folks come to see you. Got to work up to it, got to deserve it, kid. They need your pain and your tears. Your pain and your tears are funny. Real funny.
We all have been through it. No body of them wants to see the reality, mind. They come to see the game and want to be sure of its being a game.
See, kid, your pain is a game for them, pastime. Nobody cares what you feel. You cannot feel, you are timber. Or stone.
Get real, kid, play it.
A close-up. An eye watering. A tear forming and running down the cheek leaving a wet track upon it. Another tear follows the previous one.
The Harlequin standing full height, his back towards the Camera. The Harlequin turns his head to the Camera, partially turning his body. The Camera moves closer to the standing Harlequin. A close-up of the Harlequin’s face surrounded by his black’n’red cap. The make-up on the Harlequin’s cheeks is furrowed by tears.
The Harlequin turns away from the Camera. He reaches into his bosom. The next moment, turning completely round, he stretches both his arms forward, in the direction of the Camera. The Camera follows the arm, gradually focusing upon the Harlequin’s heart which he holds upon the palms of both the hands. The Harlequin’s face must not be visible.
A panorama of the hilly place. The figure of the Harlequin with his hands stretched forth viewed from above. Gradually, the distance increases.
Sound of distant muffled laughter in the background.
END OF THE COMEDY
incineration
I was a bard, a soldier, a tramp.
And I longed for home. Thou set me on fire.
Now I am Thy candle.
there is time. cloudy. present. sunny. past. my. now. flaming. time. is.
eyes raised. to the heaven. from the earth. upwards. wordlessly. again. anew. eyes. raised.
there is a heart. beating. pump. red. cold. behind the arteries. unyielding. red-hot. broken. heart. is.
a thought grows. in strength. uncalled for. in silence. in storm. in contradictions. in loneliness. amidst people. out of loneliness. a thought. grows.
mute are my steps entering your house. your house where nothing is left. your house, devastated. mutely sparkles hit the flint of the floor of your house when the iron soles of my boots touch it. my steps are mute in your house.
where shall i raise my eyes when i do not see the walls of your house anymore. the walls of your house that are so high. the walls of your house so dew-covered at daybreak. where shall i raise my eyes when i see the walls of your house no more.
the roof of your house blue as the skies. the very sky is the roof of your house. of your house the beams and the lathings of which i see in my memories. where shall my eyes rest upon when your house has the sky for its roof.
the heart of your house penetrated by a ray of the sun. as a lance piercing the mists of daybreak a sunray landing in the heart of your house. in the columns of dust my heart recognises the thing taking place in the beginning of time. a cross of sunrays in the heart of your house as a witness to its place. the heart of your house pierced by a sunray.
your house. maybe is. must be. for your glory. in memory. built. ruined. noticed. living. house. of yours.
me walker. in the road. tired. winged. falling. drenched in rain. in your house. i meet. you. o. the walker. me.
to burn. like a flame. from all the heart. again. in the eyes. responding to you. in silence. burn.
to burn. o god how it hurts.
o God how It Hurts.
O GOD HOW IT HURTS
but you would know it anyway.
love never ends
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
… … …For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of those is love.
(1 Corinthians, 13)
Love never ends…
I touch your face, I go past the stone we met – I am rain, in the face of desert.
I will end one day, one moment – I will cease, depart to another dimension. Like rain, evaporating from the face of ground.
Who knows when we come closer and closer, into touch with each other… When we evaporate, where do we go? … Do we?
Love never ends…
Love is a fire feeding us, feeding on us, feeding with us. It is the aeternal fire of mutual knowledge and staying in touch.
Further than hands will reach, further than life reaches, love still is.
I am in rain, touching your face, mutely, wordlessly, worldlessly.
Prophecies will pass away, there is a moment when time ends, when we see no further. On the brink of the unknown we know, beyond all foreknowledge, goes love.
You take me up in your palms like a cup, to hold me. Love is a cup that carries us through the impossible ends of time.
Tongues will cease, all that can be put into words, all the description and differences we burden the words with, it all will fade away, into the all-embracing acceptance and wonder of love.
Love is eloquent silence, the slow motion of the God-filled word that speaks from heart to heart.
Through this rain, the sun shines on you, and I behold you engulfed in a multi-faceted halo. The voice of love pronounces us into words that created the world.
Knowledge will pass away, when the tiny particles of time will stop running from the past into future, I will know it all – the process of getting acquainted with the world will be over.
I am rain, contained in clouds far above the ground. I terminate my cloud-ness, I gain the knowledge of being raindrop and that of landing on soil. Your knowledge of the natural laws hinders me not.
At some point in time, all that can be learned, will be known, except love, for love is unfathomable, it knows no borders, the more it is known, the more there is to be learned of it.
My eyes are blurred, by water or tears, it matters not – I reach out for the moment my vision will be freed.
When I will behold the reality beyond reflection.
Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face…
I look into distance, and only a haze stands in front of my eyes. The haze is the sign of the incompleteness of my senses.
You are so far that my physical senses cannot reach you. Haze and distance are stronger than me – the me of here and now. Love takes my eyes and carries them through the haze of distance. Through/with love can I behold you wherever you are.
Love is the cleansing matter, the cleaning substance for our blurred senses.
Love sees face to face, and shuns not.
Love distorts not. It is the Real Image reflected in the Impeccable Mirror.
I behold you. You see me. That Act of Beholding in reality, is love.
I am but a part, apart from the whole. I know you but in part. I know only that much as is revealed unto me. Love unites me, links me to the lost wholeness. I know but in part, but the part I know with, is a part of the wholeness of love.
Love understands what I am why I am and where I am heading to. It is the Actual Fullness of Knowledge that condemns not.
Love sanctifies, love elucidates, love makes the beauty and the beholder shine forth.
Love beholds not itself. It has washed itself away. Like the all-consuming fire, love lights up those whom it burns.
In love I am known, known fully, the way I am – love knows, understands, and turns not away.
Beyond all foreknowledge and wild guesses, overrunning all the mute feelings and obscure sensations, calming all the whirlwinds of emotion, love comes,
whatever it is in us, with us – love exceeds it, surpasses it in clarity and fairness.
Love is eternal. I will end one moment. You will not exist forever. Beyond the bonds of death, we will behold each other, feel each other, understand each other -
Through that all-surpassing greatest force, knowledge and Person who has long ago
beheld,
sought, chosen, upheld, understood
both of us, all of us.
So faith, hope and love abide, these three.
the run
Behold a field.
One cannot get there that simply. One cannot touch the snow. The mist is unreachable, impenetrable.
Time touches my essence. Somehow, there is a breach in time, in my times of life. Through a hole in time, I am transported there.
Into the field where pale blue light caresses the non-existent.
An outsider in time, immaterial, frozen on this side, I run on that field where pale blue stars are scattered. On the edges of my run, barely touching the field of vision, my dead dogs run.
They bark in voices of memory, bark at the hidden, unfound animals; in their voices of memory they relate to each other, and we rush with the wind together.
The field is not bare, there is a line of forest somewhere there, there is a depression right here, and then – a hillock; we run and know not
of beginnings, ends and fatigue.
The mist gathers in depressions. The mist is like water, and our feet get tangled in the clouds, we swim and fly.
We know each other from eternity.
We have had little time together. Only for a moment in life there has been the feeling of the moist tongue and a hand on the back.
Ad then – the question of why and where.
We run over the inaccessible field, and our relation is super-temporal.
I live in time. In times, I live. Outside all that, outside the set hours, the shackles of minutes and daily limitations, my dead dogs run.
Tireless, acknowledging me and each other from the outside of time, chiselled in my heart,
unforgettable, unconfusable, my very own
dogs
dead dogs on the border of the field of vision,
thus they do run.
wild roses
Under this silly sun,
the Infinity itself has been hidden in the
unbearable beauty
of the lowly blossom of a wild rose
amidst thorns.
There is a world.
Somewhere to stand.
Somebody awaits me there.
I took thee to show where wild-roses grow.
I took thee to my garden of Eden.
That faraway garden of dream
of my dream of
What do I dream of when I see the faraway sense of roses?
I retire to quietude, to the quiet of the steps inside the walls of the imagined path.
That world is quiet. Before the breeze caresses the little twigs and leaves of that garden, the sun will not rise.
There is a gate.
Somewhere to enter.
Somebody is waiting for me there.
I take thee by hand and I lead thee each step by that garden path.
Behold, the time of the rose-blossom is nigh.
It is high time to wait for the pale blossoms to open amidst thorns.
I took thee by hand where the tall oaks stand, where the birches stand, bare.
I took thee to that faraway land of my garden.
I took thee to show how wild-roses grow in that furthermost corner.
There are flowers in that garden, thou knowest. There are flowers known only unto me. And I take thee by hand and I try to speak so that the names stick to you both.
I took thee to be named by all that grows around us.
I took thee to name all that comes our way.
The flowers mutter under breath. The faint breath of wind is audible and our talk discernible amidst the softness of noises in that faraway garden.
The flowers of that garden, they will name us according to their like or dislike.
There is a star.
Somewhere to look at.
Somebody sees it, too.
Thou takest me by hand and thy lips pronounce another plant. It is on blossom and thou callest them flowers. A word unknown to me no longer.
The flowers pronounce us as we pass them. They rustle and whisper expressing their memories of seedlings and later, the planting and growth, and
Wind.
The Western wind explains the secret of the withered whitest rose.
How does one tell a garden, a garden of tale so real and so imagined.
Song.
Beyond the yards and walls, over the border-lines the song goes and takes over. It is the song that sings the flowers we encounter so by-passingly.
The song brings the garden to a halt and existence.
And then, in the faraway corner, the roses are.
We behold each other, and the gazes meet, and the autumn winds touch upon us as we look at each other. The summer is past, already and irrevocably.
I took thee to show where wild-roses grow;
The autumn was carrying petals with winds;
Too long did it take, to pass the gravel-clad path, to cross the wind-scented plots,
to hear our lot
from the lips of the flowers.
I still want to stand close at thy hand in that faraway garden created by song and sung by the winds when the autumn comes
and the flowers will allot names to us.
Names that will
Last.
There is a world.
Somewhere to stand.
Somebody is there to share it.
