A Long Walk

On a clear hot day, you can see forever. You can walk along the corridors of the teeming hive, watching industry vie with the apathy of fatigue, watching the clash of intellect against intellect in the arena of the pit. Iron sharpens iron, as one man sharpens another, weapons in the hands of warriors. Salt in open wounds, salt for spoiled meat, salt, salt, saltiness. Salubrious and salaried, all mingling in the cauldron of sweat. The perspirate meet the aspirate, the desperate meet the vituperate. And from the ash a fire is woken, the cockatrice is born, the phoenix arises.

Lead is transmuted to gold, quicksilver is the unalloyed spirit, and the antimony withers on the chalcogen alembic. It is like that, it is all like that, no paean to the pagan coould capture this rippling suppleness of the fine and private place. This is a school, of discipline, of emotion, of intellect, of fish. The salmon leap, the sailor swears, the mermaid giggles and the old man rolls his trousers up as he looks out to the sea. The sea gurns, like the crystal watchglass of Atlantis.

Through the glass, we see the praetors, the lictors, the young proconsuls and the younger magistrates of a newer age. None carry sticks, let alone axes. None will wield a sickle for the harvest, or a hammer at the forge. And yet there is a bemused keenness in their gaze as they try so hard to influence their peers, to make them believe that they do not care and yet have great care for things that matter and do not. Byzantium's nightingale, and the doom of Rome.

Yet there is light, as from a tall hill, an old but mighty beacon. It is a pharos without the pharisees, it is a colossus in old gold now tinted with a coppery glaze. And it stands tall, like a giant beset by - no, not pygmies - but industrious and determined sappers. Will anything survive in this mighty pile of the works of man beneath the gaze of God?

The mind sizzles, the fuse burns down, the gelignite sweats its sweat of instability. Somewhere is a stable where four horses whicker to be ridden out, and four riders arm. Somewhere, justice waits to fall like a thunderbolt, an eagle stoops to conquer.

Yet behind the eyes, a reservoir of calm remains; God is in His heaven, eternity is in a grain of sand, terror stays in its pinch of dust. The lenses are unsullied. The windows of the soul are clear. And we will all give glory to the Highest in the end.