The Fourth Day
Having sat the prescribed time of sentence in the Market Place of Gods, the young Beggar's son left in mid day. He had performed no transactions of reimburse but, in his heart, he knew this a shameful victory. Guilt whispered to his mind between the press of the law and the whip of his own teachings again, the common man had been left with only room to crawl. He alone had produced or at least joined the task masters, in this continuous abomination.
Stirring his thoughts in the dirt, the Beggar had sat and waited one of the crowd's return. Gladly give refund, gladly give all earned to one, just for a chance to speak of a calmer, gentler search. For the Judge was right, he had failed in his teachings. If the open minds are presented, the teacher faults if emptiness prevails. Blame the cook for no supper, not the guests! The small crowd had journeyed to him, weary in their ordeal of annual subterfuge; and daily disappointment. A carnage of hearts; souls ploughed asunder in a godless sow and reap.
Had he done any better? Than those false hawkers who mixed sweat and reverence in all names of golden trickery?They, at least, offered the painting of a dream, so that the dream may be thought real. That all slaves may look upon it and learn to sing beautiful music with their chains. For the delight of slave and master alike.
What then had he done? He had broken no chains, changed no iron symphony to joyous throats of release. He had merely heated the steel that their hands burnt to its pluck.
Ripped from the frame the forgeries of life but left no scene in the gap.
Righteous is their anger and hate, that he would turn hope into a plunder of subsistence; a boot heavy upon their tokens. The child does not wish hammers in exchange for toys; it wishes better, shinier playthings. He, as some depraved tyrant of reason, would throw babes into the war. A battle scarred of collected sides, all buffoons raging from corpses.
Was this to be his calling? Amass mountains of carnage given sufferance to his name too. Certain it would bring his name hiss hard in immortality's lair; but was this truly his idol of greatness? That he would be great through a liberation; a flowering of their greatness. Can that even be? Are the words of one man, the heart of another? Is rain oak and not grass?
Yet surely though the oak is what it is, it would not thrive without rain?
Yet will it thrive in a flood? and what is rain but a single word; what is theology but the flood?
Has he not failed; done as all men do? Has he not tripped over a single delicate dew? Absorbed this to the furthest stretch of his single heart; till the walls skinned crystal clear and light and panorama gathered to its beat like light embracing a moth. Yet then to beg more; to misunderstand completely; for a mind is so tiny, so feeble to this task. To misunderstand and not know that only Death can gentle unpeel and expand the heart; till then containment must stay feeding gentle on a single drop of life. There can be no more, yet this is half the universe, if a man understood and looked not for a conquerable word but instead, laid gentle, stayed reclined this iron bed of his making. Iron not for pain but for resistance the ceaseless batterings from a restless man.
But the mind sees so little because its eyes are tiny; yet, its littleness seduces itself to large. It would believe in more for it believes it is great, only that which is about it is little. It will not hear the heart's truth that it is a tiny mind in a magnificent world. The mind a simple thing that wonders tricks if a ball flies to it, or it to a ball. A heart knows with instant senses the size of a ball, size of a hand, size of a world and which can fit in which. Yet, alas for it, tiny looks rule wide yearns; as in all things of man.
So the mind grasps in its demands of self love, a frenzy of flutter, black, with a great long beak. This its narrow scope of probe. A dark beam probing the light. Thus it rips the clouds, puffed to their gentleness of cascade a drop at a time. Clouds gathered such in nectars of larger worlds, the eye's beak gores the belly and torrents spill. The result: all left to a heart floundering beyond its hope and a tiny mind fathomed beyond grasp; a beetle defeated in oceans. How can such wing to higher worlds now? Having stepped the cradle of infinity and plunged to nothing.
Where now to find this single drop, single word now overboard; now given for lost; bled into blood of heart's surge; a perfect thought cringed under scowling volumes?
What had he done to them; done to himself?
How can he give what he has lost? Let the other Merchants splash in their convulsions; drowning in the laps of their tongue's arching. He would cease to add to the circles of whirling deception. The sucking Pool of Congregation. It is all a lie to a heart and a drowning man gropes for no rainbows. Those who would weave these illusions are but tyrants to the small eyes of the unbleached, the unrotted. They are hope makers insidious in their trade for they sell what cannot be sold; only the hope of it.
For him then, for any then, is there no doing, no hope to be cast and chance link with something less turbulent? Less dark in its volumes of deep? How does one drink an ocean to filter a drop? Shed torrents, yet retain the single heart raptured inside that unique tear.
How does one remember the Word? How does one call for a name without the name? As if to shout silent into dead winds; whisper through a mind endlessly across voids.
Were his father here, he may remember the word. Though, was it ever spoken between them? So much passed their lips in those few years; much more passed their minds. The word may have been spoken many times yet his ears may not have heard it.
Would his father have called it God? Much his father spoke of man through this word of God. That men could love men but only by the love of this God. Had he not said that each man was not unworthy of this love, yet each man was incapable?
How strong then had seemed the thought; now faded in its linger. Was his father wrong?
Did it not now seem he was saying we were all curs who would fight in pack without a master? Noble, beautiful beasts but cursed with foul hearts nonetheless? Was he not right? They could not find his God, yet they found him. Lifted him high that they may elevate their cruelty.
Was this why the Beggar's son gave denial of the word God? That a God would watch idle in his intent or worse active in his plan. That all there could only mumble 'forgive' and flex their hands naked without claws. At least curs would bark! Those disciples, followers who had never the discipline to form ranks, nor the courage to follow.
When he had heard, when he came upon them in his youthful rage and sure arrogance of defiance, they had flung him out. Their ears could not stand the burn of why; their faces seared to his hot blaze of eye. He, a prince in his rags and bent staff, demanding justice he honoured from a broken king's rabble. All a noise of a bad street play; the players unrehearsed giving token to the dramatics.
His father stretched before whipped dogs deserved a larger pageant.
Yet, the Beggar's young son wondered, now in the eve of youthful fire, if he truly would have done better. The soldier's ranks; the tribunal's tongues, the jeers and catcalls, those were nothing. The battle would have been with his father's eyes. His father's words demanding forgiveness. Could he alone, he perhaps most loved and most loving, have smashed his father's work and plunged the splinters of this rape into other men's throats? Pushed his father aside as he shielded his aggressors? Or worse shrugged from a shoulder, a hand that had never touched but gentle? Ignored eyes that his should had cradled him from unwanted to loved? Cursed a mouth which had spoke his own name as seabirds speak of flight?
Like the disciples, the Beggar's son knew that he too could not have severed destiny's ropes. Not as his father tied them to his own wrists.
He would have been just like all the rest, head curled neither able to utter curses or forgiveness; caught between a snarling world and God's. Mongrels without tongues; angels without wings.
And what if roles reversed, a son crucified instead of a father? The Beggar's son knew agony would not beg forgiveness for its maker, yet the father would. The father humble yet of full eye would look to the mob and forgive the
m. How can a son forgive a father for that?
All these years after, he had pondered what made wood and nails higher than life, a father's life, a son's life, any life. He could bring forth no answer. He knew somehow his father had died for a cause but he knew not the name of that cause. The Beggar's son cared not to call it futile yet it hung so close to that edge, it seemed his mind whirled when he crept close. And lost its vision of the sound; its colour of growth.
So the word, his father's word, his word, the word of single drops, life itself, did not come thundering from the past. It was hidden to the present. Would it remain elusive, mirrored all of the future?
The Beggar's son could not say; did not know. He only knew he could not give flight a word he could not unwrap. He could lead astray a flock while he toiled paths with blind crooks. Better alone. Among shepherds, few are men, many are wolves yet of what use was an empty sling? The perfect stone must be found before this David could slew his own Goliath. In truth, victory proceeds the spoils.
So the Beggar's young son turned his back to the flocking dust frenzied among those who shear with woollen eyes. Left the Market Place and began walking through the city towards a small ridge of mountains seen larger or smaller depending on the sun's haze and dust's