And he answered: You give but little when you give of your possessions. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.Įven as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And with a great voice he said: When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. Now therefore disclose us to ourselves, and tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death.Īnd he answered, People of Orphalese, of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving within your souls? Love In your aloneness you have watched with our days, and in your wakefulness you have listened to the weeping and the laughter of our sleep. And we will give it unto our children, and they unto their children, and it shall not perish. Yet this we ask ere you leave us, that you speak to us and give us of your truth. Deep is your longing for the land of your memories and the dwelling place of your greater desires and our love would not bind you nor our needs hold you. And now your ship has come, and you must needs go. And he looked upon her with exceeding tenderness, for it was she who had first sought and believed in him when he had been but a day in their city.Īnd she hailed him, saying: Prophet of God, in quest of the uttermost, long have you searched the distances for your ship. And there came out of the sanctuary a woman whose name was Almitra.Īnd she was a seeress. And he and the people proceeded towards the great square before the temple. He only bent his head and those who stood near saw his tears falling upon his breast. Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern, And the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also.Īnd others came also and entreated him. Shall my heart become a tree heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them? And shall my desires flow like a fountain that I may fill their cups? Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence? If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seed, and in what unremembered seasons? If this indeed be the hour in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein. And he said to himself: Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn? And what shall I give unto him who has left his plough in midfurrow, or to him who has stopped the wheel of his winepress? And he heard their voices calling his name, and shouting from field to field telling one another of the coming of his ship. And the only way to end its curse was to give it what it wanted-to destroy that which would see it destroyed.And as he walked he saw from afar men and women leaving their fields and their vineyards and hastening towards the city gates. Though it chose not to speak to him, he knew what it wanted. Crossed to the window that framed the entity that had cursed him. What was it he said once to one of the newly risen? The Light shines brightest in those it consumes? Oh, how he felt consumed. The bright shining example of all that was good and enduring. An insurmountable restlessness that prevented what little respite he could find in his nightmare-fueled sleep. He went to his quarters each night, in the half tower he had commissioned, and he laid in bed, his feet incapable of stillness as a thousand million insects scurried their way up and down the sinews of his muscles, instigating perpetual and maddening motions that all his muscle and might couldn't stop. Muscle and might and metal-a mountain of it, they said. One after another after another, and each and every one of them weighed upon his shoulders in a way only Atlas could comprehend. But he was a new man who carried with him the burden of all the lives before him. How many lives now? How many deaths? He came to believe that each time his Ghost brought him back, he came back a new man. On the cusp between life and light, between death and destruction.
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