The Seven Days of Wander
Just as hand once had full fingers of extend; of reach; but is now only a fifth in its points of accusation.
Is this the function of the law solely as hawk pursues the untimely dart of the wary? Is the law carnivorous? If so, is there no danger in peeking for mercy amongst large teeth, their gaps piled with the scattered bones of its appetites. And its glut onto who, for itself, for men, for man?
With the law first solely onto a Man, what look is there for blame, for the Man is always solely righted or wronged onto himself. Being always to blame, he becomes blameless. Every second calls forth duty onto himself and that altar decrees his own law.
It matters not to each neighbour whether society judges them wrong, first they must judge themselves wrong but they must do so before the act, not after.
For in the begin of man, the law guided a man what is to be done, not what is not. For it was understood intimately that punishment was a thing of unreap or unreward not a clarion blaring amongst what was all ready shadows curled amongst shadows, like crusted worms shy of both sun and descending heel.
That was Man and the law onto self. What is men? Men are but the great herds of worms let breed and swell in the dank cast, never to even set one of a hundred cringe-a-ped feet into the sun. Amongst this fetid diggings is uproot to give the greenish decay; borne of wormy tooth upon necked slime; the law of social, of society; of men pulped into co-operation!
Where is hope trembled, much gnawed yet living, amongst all this? It dwells as the law of intimacy. Where lover, brother, friend, parents, children exist in the heart and call the soul to strive something more sacred, more sweetly scented then simple the hold of dagger upon throats; false eyes upon covet. Unto ourselves we are as gods, unto our loves we are human, unto our men we are worms.
Lawyer: Gods, then! It worsens! First tell we gave each man the robed judge and jailor's key, now we bestow an oracle's eye and wings to the infinite! And pray if the god errs who will tumble his throne?
Beggar: Again, err and the pursuit of err is maimed the foundation of law. Guilt is our worship; our eternal guest, not justice. For I ask you what if the god did right? Who dwells on these unlimits of destiny, of human? No one. No one takes the child and holds before it cupped empty hands and speaks solemn: "Here is your universe: Void, build upon it all things possible in you. Let nothing you envision, do, say, create be scarred or lessened by the hand of anyone else. Let your purity crystallize sparse into density, as cold liberates the vaporous wander of dew into clear sculpture. That what is built throughout the void, as if a web intricate, taut of single note, whatever structure whether precise minute as the bee comb or mammoth as any giant pilings, it is all a reflection, a shimmer of a mirrored soul. In return of our gift as the offer of the voice, your birth, you return for beholder, if truly believed, the creations of image in that portion to our worthiness'.
No one does this. Instead all stand before the child with cupped empty hands and say 'Spill, your dreams, assemble your living, contain your growth to these boundaries of rim and unrelenting surface; that behold at death when the hands open and you plunge downward, the hands will give mercy and not shake the bits of remembrance in all this adhesive cling. For as men your dreams are not air but solid as the destinies of dung'.
Sirs, this whisper I touch leads to greater roar. The first step understood yields disarming for the journey welcomed. The first law is first not because the last man huddle elsewhere but because the first man rose in a light and declared the dawn: law.
Many ways, many times this law has been labelled and drawn, renewed and hammered. Let us use the example I of lately heard and no sooner heard than saw mirrored as well which doubles the miraculous in this world of faces laden bent double upon all groans of masks.
Proud lifts my throat to remember a humble teacher who spoke: 'Do onto others as you would have them do onto you'.
Gentlest I hope of men, if not in occupation at least in dreams of mercy, if you see nothing of this law earliest decreed, envision, dwell, study the first word of first sentence of the first law of the first man: 'Do'.
What booms of destiny thunderous should echo if ever after when this first has cleared the air as if will and fate embrace palm weld against palm! See friends the word is not: 'Don't'. The law has no decree of: Don't do onto others as you would not have done onto you!
For infinite is the night, the darkness but seldom is the dream. Ask your brother what you should not do to him and the choices gather as numerous as the fines of a rat hair and those collected as infinite as all upon the rat, then multiply again by the vast summary of rats, on, on, on. There is no end to guilt. Yet innocence has its boundary exclusive. For oddly the eyes of guilt never cease their ravenous inward yet the eyes of innocence take their journeys only upon their brother's faces.
Under the first law we do not 'do' by the flog of don't; rather we 'do' into the folds of cherished, propelled always by the absoluteness of innocence; drunk in our purpose, as like the eagle designs the very mountain as borne to measure upon his personal acceleration, the air has breath near only his wings, the sun, the wind dance at the lift of only his wing tips. For how should an eagle fly but fly! Do we say onto the bird, don't walk, don't crawl, don't fall, don't lie, don't swim, on, on, on. No! We say 'fly as you would wish others fly. Fly into the wind as you would have the wind fly into thyself'.
The limbs of 'Do' are: reach; the limb of 'Don't' is: flinch. Reach into others as you would be reached'. The first law is to touch man to be touched.
Executioner: Do reach thy point, Beggar! The first law unto discussion should be brevity, thou remain untouched by its sentence, as if an endless jerking long after the rope has swung a longer neck.
Beggar: Ha, yes, I stand condemned and further plea would only enter more proven. Innocence is no brash song but well it should be; then, the world may yet unfail to resurrect what it has all begged denial. But I too deviate for iron sceptres are not so easy a wand in the wind.
To conclude of this law: The ignoble gather from the singular noble and decree; and decree in fear of the noble. Yet the noble as singular will venture (not adventure) in the instincts closest to justice; to truth since by his stance of alone, he yields less to all but the inner voice of Man. Likened to a great bellying note of gold who will tremble; who will twin its purity more? The ear drawn to inner or those scattered about the hillside unstrong to this call; a muted huddle against this giant's delicacy?
Then each man knows intimate the law and the inner voice of man which is to 'do' and that which is done is always of involuntary justice, the knee jerk of truth. Where wisdom has come again the full circle to instinct and need not be learned but knows the migrations 'tween scent and purpose as the marsh cranes, long in a neck swivel, still having no hesitate to straighten and thrust at what begs homeward.
The neighbour of the inflamed course; he measured his act first upon himself; one must not claim he would have thieved or even killed for his wife; no the claim rather is to be made upon his virtue only as seen by the juried of his eyes only. It is no good that the crowd surrounds and hounds and heckles; the Man can only dwell within.
For how can there be sin if there is no withholding; what is shame without the hideous circlings of glare.
To say, this, my gentlemen, is to say there can be no theft if there is no possession, that stands the hierarchy of the law and curses all blame boiling as ulcers upon the blamers.
For if there is no theft where there is no possession is not the persecution of the thief only a veil only a mask of the celebration of the grasp!
Oh Gods unleashed! And demons newly of naked revelling! Down 'flowers' up and the pinnacles of justice (mock this ye!) plunge amongst squealing ruts and snouts of old pullets. The Great Laws of Cities are unwalled; of Social are unmanned. For how can one tell false if no one speaks the truth? How can one murder if none can die? How does one cheat amongst those who welcome no barter and call all exchange fair? Who would be called glutton by the full and who woul
d be termed traitor amongst a world unloyal to loyalty itself? How many fences can keep the snake from the toad, the vulture from the weak?
This thievery tried, who begs the trial upon the Man? Is it not the clutch of the ignoble; as a shielding of utter nakedness; this disembowelling of a serpent that reveals the torn child's carcass? Possession, friends, is no burden, nay, nay, it bears light feather upon the gaping breast of foul vulture and squint eyed hawk alike!
And the thief ravaged is the persecution of not the innocent but of the avenger of the hand to the throat of these possessors so godless so unmanned they must fill the echo of their howls with things!
The neighbour who sought to save life knew the man-instinct, breathed its compassionate heat full in his belly for that instant of destiny, of fate. The other, the neighbourly ladder, possessed and therefore had laden his soul godless with the great Chain of 'I am because I have'.
LET ONE MAN JUST ONE, ONE TEAR HOLES THRU THE DIMNESS BY DECLARE: "I AM BECAUSE I AM".
and no possession will need blemish his open hands.
To punish this crime, esp in the name of God, or worse in the name of humanity or greatly more absurd in the name of society is to revel in the shameless. Against the thief it has said: "Covet not thy