Time for renewal, the old boys said, a pro forma thing
in our pockets. Let's have it done and get on with the plan
to put some more grease on the sockets that wobble
and creak, as if this is simply another repair and the magic
required, mere sleight-of-hand. Take one part shock-doctrine
to two parts of word, add a little distraction
and laugh at the rest as though it all very absurd.
The world's made of magic and magic of word,
which is what we manipulate best.
On Millennial Day, the boys showed up prompt,
unsaddled from black SUVs. They'd cut a quick deal,
return as they came with the contract firmly in hand—
for next thousand years all the loot they can plunder
and the goo that lies under the sand. The terms were the usual
with minor revisions, there'd be war and division sufficient,
occasions for mayhem and fuel for the engines,
a bone for the hungry with fat and provisions
for those who held guaranteed shares.
They entered a room that was bare as a bunker,
only a long empty table. Upon it a codex, so ancient a volume
its contents unknown but for fragments of fable that few
had survived as they murdered each other in frantic confusion
and those who were left had nowhere to hide from the one
that had stalked them and knew all their weakness, scattered
the tribe to the winds, save for those who resolved
they'd someday return to challenge the beast once again.
One placed a paper face down on the table, the rest
absently glanced without wonder. They knew what was on it
a thousand times over, clauses they'd written themselves
were upon it and none need consider the minor revisions
that kept it all moving along. Nothing had changed
since that day long ago, and little would ever go wrong.
What they'd cut for themselves was all that mattered,
no matter who paid for the feast. It only remained
to be signed and then sealed; delivered, this day, to the beast.
A Great Door now opened on the Spiritus Mundi
though none in the room grasped the fact
the hour come round had not quite arrived
nor were they prepared for what happened next.
Through that portal came, uninvited, a guest,
a flute and a lyre in hand— the one made of reed,
the other of string were now carefully set by the text.
The poet appeared without fanfare or trumpet,
taking a seat at the table. "Let me remind you
that all isn't settled," laying his hand on the codex.
"You seem to forget what this contract contains,
and the clause that might someday enable."
The men looked at each other, each at his brother,
surely their old bones did rattle. "Just so," said the poet,
"your role was ordained on that day long ago,
when it seemed all was lost and whatever remained
of us scattered. All that you've done, all that you've ruined
has been only a practice for battle."
The men rose as one. No more need be said
as they took back the contract, unsigned and unsealed.
They would try it again another day, some small details
needed attention, that's all. Save the few not so certain
things continue this way, nor would they choose
to so have it, now that something else was in play.
The fine print included a perpetual clause
that our fall from grace remain undecided,
a dark voice that now gave reason to pause—
YOU'RE NOT IN CHARGE HERE OR ANYWHERE ELSE,
DON'T EVER FORGET WHO HAS STATIONED YOU SO,
OR JUST WHAT IT WAS YOU MIGHT LIVE TO REGRET—
I'VE MADE IT SO AND MAY UNMAKE IT YET.
fr. The Trilogy of the Beast ©red slider, 2011. All rights reserved.
[a little background:]
1. Lewis Mumford observed that those who think they are in control, the heads of our corporations and institutions,
are not really in charge. They, too, are expendible and in any case can do little to change the course of the
machinery they operate. The machinery has become larger than any who might think that mere change of command will
mend its way or tame its savagery. We have set loose the spawn of a beast in the world that has no intention of yielding to our demands.
2. Contrary to Santayana's classic remark, ""Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", I have observed that Those who only remember history are doomed to repeat it. We know history, yet we keep on repeating it.
Unless, that is, we find a way to rid ourselves of the delusion that history is all there is of our species.
3. Magic is very powerful. For its most violent and virulent forms it may be necessary,
but never sufficient, to banish it. It will always return again and again; often in some more potent and destructive appearance.
Killing it once and for all may seem to be the only other prudent thing to do. Yet, that option is taken at great cost. For
once murdered, that magic is gone forever; not simply its evil mask, but its force and its power as well. It is far better when
we find a way to use magic without magic using us; to put a leash on it; to constrain and control it. Yes, there is always a risk.
But magic was originally a gift, neither good nor evil in and of itself. It is only we, our species, who determine which aspect
magic will show to us. Therein, the beast of the matter lies. Not in the magic, but in the magician. That is where the battle
must be engaged.
4. The Legend: It was at the very beginning, when we were so few and so fragile, hardly clinging to this planet by a nail. It
caught our scent and was so dangerous and powerful that nearly all of us were destroyed in the first blow. Those that remained to
fight were confronted with weapons more deadly than its physical might. We were deluded and turned on ourselves. The thing each of
us feared most was flung back at us until father's slew sons and Mother's slew daughters and each of us turned on their brothers and
sisters. Hardly any remained alive after that onslaught. The precious few who were left, scattered and hid and trembled. Our wounds
were not merely of the flesh, but of something that was indelibly etched in our minds that day. Something that would never be forgotten,
not for the tens of thousands of millennia that followed. It was a catastrophe that not only shaped all that we did from then on,
but shaped what we were to become; as a species, as a being among beings. All that remained of what we once were, what we might
have become, was a single, fragile strand. Whether it connected one of us, or many, no one can say. But this much was certain: Someday,
in some distant future, we would return to battle again. Only this time, we would be equipped to meet the beast on equal terms.
We would be toughened, not only by the millions of years of experience, but by coming to terms with our own fears and delusions
about who and what we are. It has burned in us ever since, that bright chord that unites us each with each other and all with
everything else, that someday we would lift our eyes from the ground and gaze upon the gardens of the sky.
[The Legend of the Beast, as told by Red Slider.]
Related passages from The Ballad of Emma Good':
[from the 'Author's Preface':] "In 1920, when he spotted the beast from a distance, it appeared to that poet to be
moving on slow thighs. Yeats miscalculated. Nine or ten-thousand years before, perhaps, when it
first infected the origins of our civilization, it might have been moving very slowly. Certainly it
was then that our modern customs of slaughter and deceit, ambition and power were first
leveraged into the foundations of our mythos. But, for the past three-thousand years of the
modern epicycle, we have been running full-tilt like a pack of lemmings, yet the beast has never
failed to keep up and one suspects it can overtake and devour us at any moment it desires."
[Part IX - Crazy Bill to Jack: ]
"By many guises it had come,
each warrior slew his brother,
each father mirrored by each son,
each daughter by her mother.
"Within each soul it would appear,
as if the Beast engaged
the furthest reach of Other's fear
became the beast enraged."
"The stones within our bellies burned,
though few survived that battle,
as now the greatest seers learn,
those bones forever rattle."
~ ~ ~
[Part XIV - Jenny Dawn to Bill and Jack:]
"We left the rest to haw and hem,
and spoke to dark conclusion.
The Beast does not belong to them,
there's gonna be confusion."...
"Three times has Emma Morning risen,
three times the Beast has learned,
that from a blood-dimmed earthly prison
the warrior has returned."
~ ~ ~
[Part XV - Jenny Dawn, the last sacrament at Emma's Farm.]
A long forgotten healer's art
of speech made fast within
that string the bow tips of the heart
to sing the quivering.
Of reed, the flute; of string, the lyre,
to warrior was given;
earth prepares what heaven provides,
the dead divide the living.
Warrior! Stretch upon thy deed
bend thy bow to fit thy word,
take such strength from dexterous reed,
in that, be what is heard.
Back to the 'Poems for Change' index
To Red Slider's website