rolled in from afar,
clouds blew toward me
heavy, low, hiding the sky
from my eyes. The walls
of the pit drew close, closed in.
The earth is learning—
I sensed—measuring,
gauging: how it might
ingest me.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
We will be punished. I shivered
from the cold and fear. I thought:
People must not do
this sort of thing. I thought
about my beloved jester,
so miserable as he lies near me
in this bed of earth. And all the while
I felt the blood, blood dripping from me,
flowing into soil, reaching
all the way to him, seeping through his veins,
then coming back to me and melding.
Now it is our blood, and it is her blood now,
and both of us
conceive her
once again
from blood and earth.
I became dizzy,
and drowsy, and suddenly
it seemed so light,
as if time had also
loosened its bite.
I breathed. I slowly,
slowly breathed. I hadn’t
breathed like that since then.
I haven’t ever breathed like this.
My insides were exhaled,
then drawn back to me
like a gentle dance—
WALKING MAN:
Then I awoke
from frenzied dreams
that I could not remember.
The sky turned
lucent, the wall
towered up to split it.
I could not hear
my earthen neighbors, did not know
if they were here or gone.
Though I was cold, my fingertips
smoldered and hummed:
I will not be—they pulsed. They murmured
in ten voices, a cheerful choir:
I will
not be.
One day,
I will not beeee!
And from within the will-not-be
there rose the flavor
of my being. I knew
how much
I had been,
while I was. I knew
down to my fingertips.
It was wonderful
to know, to remember:
how very much
I’d been,
and how
I would
not be.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
I hope I forget your name,
my girl, the music of your name
inside my mouth, the sweetness that would spread
throughout my body.
You were so small,
yet so much in you to forget,
and not to want a thing that was once
yours,
nor even you
yourself—
DUKE: Who is that? I think I recognized my jester’s voice.
TOWN CHRONICLER: Indeed, my lord. It is I, your servant.
DUKE: My soul mate.
TOWN CHRONICLER: It’s been a long time since those days.
DUKE: More than thirteen years since you imposed this terrible exile upon yourself. Now tell me about your daughter.
TOWN CHRONICLER: I cannot, Your Honor. The day disaster struck, you ordered me to forget her.
DUKE: My beloved friend, you know better than anyone that such an order could never have entered my mind. Tell me about her.
TOWN CHRONICLER: No, no, my lord, I cannot. Your order still stands!
DUKE: Then, jester, I order you: Forget her to my ears!
TOWN CHRONICLER:
I forget her fine short hair.
I forget her pink, translucent fingers.
I forget she was my delicate, delightful girl.
I forget the way she—
the way you would get angry if I forgot
to separate the omelet from the salad on your plate.
And when I bathed you,
you would cheer and slap the water with both hands,
and I would lift you out and wrap your body
in a soft towel and ask:
Who is this strange creature inside?
CENTAUR: My friend the chronicler talked and talked. A wellspring of forgotten gleanings erupted from him. From my window I looked out on the horizon. Between two hills I saw the vast, empty plain where the pits were dug. Fragmentary droplets shone in the starlight. The many branches of a single, giant tree swayed slowly in the wind, as if to welcome or to bid farewell.
Then a shadow suddenly moved upon the plain. It was a woman extracting herself from the earth. She took a few slow, heavy steps. She stood hugging herself. Her head was slightly lowered.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
Who will sustain her,
who will embrace,
if our two bodies
do not
envelop
her?
CENTAUR: She looked around, studied the wall at length, then disappeared down into the earth, into the neighboring trench. After a minute or two I saw a notebook hurled out of it. It flew through the air for a moment, its white pages swelling and glimmering in the darkness, then vanished.
WALKING MAN:
I thought about the earthly
beings next to me. I thought
about my son. The earth
grew warm under my body.
I spoke to him in my heart.
At least we parted without anger—
I told him—
and without resentment.
You loved us, and were loved,
and you knew that you were loved.
I asked if I could make one more request.
I’d like to learn to separate
memory from the pain. Or at least in part,
however much is possible, so that all the past
will not be drenched with so much pain.
You see, that way I can remember more of you:
I will not fear the scalding of memory.
I also said: I must separate
from you.
Do not misunderstand me
(I felt the stab of pain
pass through him
right in my own flesh)—separate
only enough to allow
my chest to broaden
into one whole breath.
I smiled, because I remembered
that was what the teacher asked for.
The ocean sky rustled,
and a smile seemed to open up
above me. Someone may have understood,
or felt me. I breathed in
the full night. The sky
no longer weighed on me,
nor did the earth,
nor me myself.
Nor you.
You—
where are
you?
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
Perhaps I need no longer reach
the very end of ways,
the final destination?
Perhaps this walk itself is both
the answer and the question?
Perhaps there is no there,
my girl, perhaps, too, no more
you?
But as I lie here, in the belly
of the earth, my pains abate
for one brief moment
and I feel and know
how life and death themselves
reach equilibrium inside me,
blissfully attuned (oh, but how
can my lips utter such vile words?!),
until like night and day, or
like the day of equinox,
when winter meets its summer,
the two mingle inside me,
granting wisdom and precision,
for which I paid a heavy price:
your life—
no,
no!
A bitter,
loathsome bargain,
yet still, my girl—
allow me to say this or else
go mad—now, for the first time,
I know not only what
death is,
but also what is life,
and more than that,
I see—
TOWN CHRONICLER:
—how life and death
stand face-to-face,
cooing at each other.
How they touch,
braided with each other
at their naked roots.
How constantly they pour
and empty each into the other—
like a couple, like
two lovers—
the sap of
their existence.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
As they commingle,
so two rivers flow
into my confluence.
I did not know, not this way,
that life in all its fullness
is lived only there,
in borderland.
It is as though I never yet
have lived, as though all things
that happened to me
never really were, until
you—
WALKERS:
Morning broke. Thin red
clouds sailed through the sky.
We slowly rose
out of the tombs,
stood nude
outside the wall.
And once again we thought
we saw it tremble,
a wave, transparent,
passing up and all along it.
We could not speak; our breath
stood still: a wall
of rock
yet also
so alive.
MIDWIFE:
A face—
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
There
in the wall,
in the stones,
I see
a face—
TOWN CHRONICLER:
No, my dear,
look here, at me. Here
is the face,
the warm, living body,
while there—
just a mirage
begat by yearnings.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
The face
of a young woman,
or a man,
or a boy—
DUKE:
And it moves
and it’s
supple
and alive.
MIDWIFE:
I must be dreaming, certainly.
My God, is that a young man?
Or a boy?
Perhaps a girl?
Girl, g-g-girl,
please look
at me …
COBBLER:
They are
imprinted
softly,
as in beeswax
or on leather—
ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:
Or in reverie?
Or in a dream? No,
no, I am not wrong:
it is a human face
I see.
WALKERS:
A child, we saw
a child’s face,
for an instant, the hint
of his forehead, sharp chin …
We trembled, as did the child.
Waves, shards of shapes
flowed in the stones,
bringing alive a relief
that writhes
and sways.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Or so it seems
to hearts that crave?
That rave?
WALKERS:
Is it simply swelling
in the rock, or could it be
a child’s tiny nose?
A mouth opening wide
or grimacing? Or just
a fissure
in the cleft of rock?
A girl? Was it a girl
who loomed above him
and then vanished? Will she return?
A girlish flicker
hovered,
dissipated,
as if the little one had knocked
just for a moment on the doors
of actuality—
then startled.
As she fades, the boy’s face changes
right before our eyes. It turns
into the long, fine, gentle
features of a youth.
His profile turns toward us,
slow, with endless wonderment.
He looks straight at us,
two eyebrows
soft arches
in the stone. His eyes
black holes.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Minute by minute they are losing
their minds. Look, people,
look: It’s a wall!
Slabs of rock!
The faces you behold
are merely
phantasms of light,
sleights of shade
and stone—
WALKERS:
But they are so
alive! They flicker
with the flash of smiles,
with questioning and sorrow,
as if those longing, desperate faces
wish to try out
every last expression
one more time,
to thereby taste
the potency
of plundered feelings.
Struck by our own hearts,
our souls wrestled,
struggled to break free,
out of their prison,
to pass from here
to there … Seized
by frenzy,
cranes in cages
were our souls,
while in the sky
a flock of birds
passed by,
migrating home.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
It is the longing, I am sure,
it is the longing that deranges
my own mind as well.
Listen to me, listen:
only our longing
sculpts our loved ones, living,
flickering.
Yes, there, look—there!
In the reliefs
of stone—
WALKERS:
And more than anything, the mouths.
Moving, moving constantly, gaping,
rending, twisting,
rounding … Perhaps
in supplication?
To whom?
Or imprecation?
Upon whom?
CENTAUR: Damn it all, if only I could be with them! If only I were there, not sitting here writing and writing! I would ram the wall and tear it down, I would break in and I would—
WALKERS:
And their bodies, are they
pushing, driving
at the wall? Fighting? Against whom?
And what? Or struggling
to thrust their way
back here?
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Or like a small child
waking, still addled,
draped in dream, beating
at his mother’s chest,
clinging,
beating, beating,
hugging …
WALKERS:
We saw an arm,
a slender shoulder, then a knee,
another, then two buds
sprouted, mounded,
a young girl’s sharp new breasts.
Above them was her face,
which slowly turned
into a smiling boy’s,
the pair of breasts became
two babies’ faces,
boy and girl.
Long hands were laid
and ten thin fingers
spread themselves around
the boyish face. His nose,
it seemed, pressed up against
the dimness of a win
dow
as he tried to
penetrate the depths
of darkness
with his gaze.
Was he trying? Did they try
to call us? Or to warn us?
Perhaps we, too,
from there, seemed
merely faint outlines,
fighting our way
out of solid rock—
Terror,
terror fell upon us.
Soon it all will vanish.
We must run now,
sink our faces
in the wall, breach it,
pull them,
tear them
out—
We froze. We did
not move! If only
we could speak to them, we thought,
we’d tell them everything
we did not say when they
still lived. Or else
we’d shout at them
through the lips of the hole
rent in us, through which
our life
seeps out
in throbbing
surges.
CENTAUR: The walking man suddenly fell on his knees at the wall and whispered his son’s name. There was no voice in his whisper, only a gaping mouth and torn eyes. In my room, I felt a sharp blade fly over here from there and slice me in two. Through my swoon of pain I heard behind me, from within the piles of objects, the voice of a small child who said quietly, softly murmuring:
BOY:
There is
breath
there
is breath
inside the pain
there is
breath
CENTAUR: I stood up on my feet. I walked around the room. I picked up this or the other object and touched it, stroked it, brought it to my lips. Then I went back and stood at the window. I could see very well using a pair of binoculars I found in one of the piles: the walker’s whisper seemed to reap the other walkers. Like him, they, too, fell to their knees, the midwife and the cobbler, the elderly teacher, the net-mender and the duke, the town chronicler and his wife. And each and every one of them, each and every one of us, called out, whispered, to his child:
WALKERS:
Lilli—
Adam? My little
Lilli—Michael—Oh, my child,
my sweet, my lost one—Hanna,
Hanna, look here—Sorry, Michael,
for hitting you—
Adam, it’s
Dad—Uwi—
My speck of life—
We awoke
lying on the ground.
The wall
stood no longer.
Perhaps it had never been
there. Perhaps nothing
of what we saw
really was.
But then a strange thought
passed through
all of us,
elusive yet acute,