wisdom. And thus, fell to the mumblings of faith, as all faith is the mere blind of gropings lost to worship but lingered of believing memories. The present prostrate as a faint past. Faith is to worship as stone is to vain. Those who fear the bleed, those who hesitate at the banks of flood become only the faithful. Their sprinkles of absolution mock the immersions of worship.
Believers. Perhaps there are no true or false believers. Only believers. Those who scurry only in faith have no throat large for wild drench song but rather remain a dry whisper; a hollow skin weekly watered and easily scattered by the heel of the Sun."
He replied "But it has been said that faith alone will move mountains."
She stopped again, her hands groped his two shoulders, her voice spoke from her belly drawing inward. "Indeed, Man-Beggar, so it is so! But what pray are the mountains the faithful humble to, turn to in eyes beseeching against lives stumbling into wide earths. Worship is the mountain. We, who worship we, we are their mountains! They pray and we come upon them, dwell and move among them. That faith, that faint cry across endless moon cycles, may be reborn upon their very decay of tooth.
That in the stretch of their eyes of look, they may raise to our vision; putting themselves on top of their own shoulders then again then again till they are indeed a small history raised into 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 interrupt 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 a 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 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 an agitate of rapid.
"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, hen 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 'Raise above me and wonder of they 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 painted 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 children’s 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
Such on and on the debating goes, Beggar, without resolve, divided equally like mules on opposite ends of a broken cart. And I as useless as a whip: as much the healer as a single carrot."
The Beggar spoke, with his eyes upon the stone, "But is it such a monument of hesitate? For will not time erode the difference of unresolve. And is that not the benefit of men anywhere? Harmony is indeed the follow of discord just as the hungry learn the gait of the full? If the price paid is the roll of a heavy dice, is that not the way of sun, and death, alloyed in stone? I do not understand of what is a little city's blood to you?"
She weighed his eyes long in hers before answer. "History. And worship." Her arm swung towards the stone. "What is all this but again and again men calling their history by the course of other man's history. By claiming that change
, they claim change. Like the whimpers of lamb which turn the course of the wolf. The lamb is devoured and though now intimate of the wolf no one would call it changed to a wolf!
Yes the Mother Sun and the Father Death demand endless or cycle. But as a worship as One, not a faith of beetles to the freshened dung.
In the course of their own blood path, each man, each woman must paint their worship as their history. High on the back of stone, delusion calls this blindness: a Vision. There is but the cycle of the shuffling lame.
They are no more a Man yet than any other man for the building and destroying of men does not create Man but is the inch of wind dunes. No More.
And worse. They have become chained to this Ball in their dreams of grand men. They have lost their mother's tongue, heed me no more, there is the language of mumbled pebbles.
They sought change without changing and this remains unchangeable. Deaf to their own song of worship, dead to any life beyond their moving hands.
Whether it arms or jaw, they remain fleas of the bitch, men-kind and will never prance as the solitary howl.
This stone is failure. Indeed a momument to failure. Mine. Theirs. A testament of what I could not hear them envision. That men is the individual Mans. No less.
That to be Man, men must turn their backs to the history, to the builders, to the shakers, to the follies of all