“You lolled in gardens where breezes fan
The blossom’s shivering shard;
But we were bred in a naked land
Where life was bitter and hard.”
-Verse 1
…
CIVILIZATION:
The brazen breath blew from the Holy Horn, from atop the steps of God’s earthly home. Above His city, over the onyx altar, attended by vestal priests, and about the empty throne—the brass herald sounded Dawn. There, hawk-nosed and wrinkled with worry, the High Priest knew that the summons awakened only the cruel, what to drive forth the tool.
He Knew that the lower tiers of the many-staired pyramid, climbing but twelve reverent steps towards Heaven, heard little and cared less for the call to prayer. Hanging fronds, stone-cloaking vines, the tinkle of fountains and the snoring of the fat, deadened the report of the holy horn—as if God too snored.
Yet the soldiers on the walls—unlike warriors of old—awakened from their grog to yawn down. The Gatekeeper did keep his covenant; the double titan doors of cedar, sheathed in copper, pivoting on oiled brass, creaked open:
… Exit the mob, the slaves, hunched in rags, dirty as the soot that remained of the burned huts from whence they had been torn, driven to their reverent toils with a wearisome groan.
He did not hear that groan, so distant-high and aloof he perched, but the shudder of the toil-doomed gaggle—lashed by blows rather than guided by rays, echoed in his harrowed soul.
Below, somewhere, he well knew, their Master, His Student Ultimate, the beating heart of this sacred city, wallowed in wicked Revel’s after-den; attended by last night’s lowly beauty planted with the unsteady seed of lust. His fawning eunuchs, wide awake when the stars yet beamed, ciphered, their stylus busy, falsifying ledgers, recording the treasures from temple and tomb the slaves of these slaves have nightward ferried; copper, silver, gold and electrum effigies—symbols of Moon, Hope and Sun—to be melted and bundled off as mere ingots of Greed’s mighty sum. Gal burned his throat, his fear to challenge the King, returning—the scales of once pure, now whored, Justice, maiden that she was, mere rapine now she is, tilted audibly in his keen mind, reminding him that the thunder-stroke of their father—Hers most of all, MUST be by spinning Fates recalled.
He walked not there, between spilled wine cups and ravished slave girls, debauched matrons sprawled with slavish paramours, drained beer buckets and their spent drinkers, holding cups rather than shields, surrounded by tawdry beauty rather than brawny soldiery:
…to those forsaken shieldmen his heart flew most sadly, marching beyond the walls within his sight most languidly, grumbling along behind the overseers, to their hollow crow caws lending their spears.
He winced, knowing, that Hope’s pale neck had long since been wrung in a counting house vault.
BARBARISM—
The warriors camped below in the tied-sack canyon.
How many times could he, their Guide, climb the highest point?
Not many seasons remained before he would leap from the highest point, perhaps to tumble wrecked to a green vale, rather than to such as this stony shale.
The women held up their babes, three children sired before the sad snows fell, before the long shadows ruled, born now before the raid upon the grass-girded city.
Upheld in motherly hands the three tiny people, newly sent into these hard lands, seemed to float.
Two twin girls, lovely and plump, were held by their one mother—the one called Rump.
He looked to Sun, rising from his rose-garlanded tomb, seeing his red light in their pink cheeks, and blessed them with a nod.
She called Shrewd, held her gaunt he-child aloft, despite her small size and slight arms, held higher than the plump girls, by motherly Rump.
Afraid to look, after having set good Horn’s son out to freeze in the Sunken Moon, he closed his eyes and prayed, “Northwind, Northwind, breathe fury into this one.”
He looked up into the eyes of the he-babe, one eye squinting askance, not entirely active, but sly-like on the hunt for life. He began to transfer his gaze from the babe’s to that of the mother to ask for particulars about the birth.
That motion was born of a notion of concern for the people, for this child was the son of Brand, the Strongest of Hand, the one returned to them after escaping the Brass Men. His doubt, before becoming a question, was punished. He, the Guide Granted No Name—was chastised. For the he-child, whether by connivance of the mother named Shrewd, or at the behest of Northwind, dispelling the warm rays of newborn Sun as he rose again to life, kicked him—their humble shaman—in the chin!
Set afire with the fury of the bitterest of winds, the man too lame to own a war name, banished the brief flicker of thought that had sensed in this new person, his successor, and flung his hands skyward to Northwind, and roared, as he had done often in the lonely spaces, on the chance that such a message might be delivered by the Higher Powers to his lowly place—and his roar echoed—“A Chief is born!”
Shrewd looked at him with a fire-like agreement, both knowing that no matter how sickly, or even monstrous, that HER baby would not be left for the Winds. That willful gaze ran him to wonder, cloakedly, hiding his thoughts, ‘What wickedness such a woman might work among the Brass Men,’ and recovered his inner composure as he outward, wildly chanted, “Ah-ah-men.”
To which, led by Shrewd, he-child held high, “A-lay-lew-ya!” sung the women.
