What is true of one man, said the judge, is true of many. The people who
once lived here are called the Anasazi. The old ones. They quit these parts,
routed by drought or disease or by wandering bands of marauders, quit these
parts ages since and of them there is no memory. They are rumors and ghosts
in this land and they are much revered. The tools, the art, the building –
these things stand in judgment on the latter races. Yet there is nothing for
them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages
wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter. In their crude
huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock.
All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and
mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their
spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight
and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has
joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside
back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeds
to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons
however primitive their works may seem to us.
[…}
If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have
done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And
is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom
and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the
noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted
at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and
the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you
see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think
that his will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.
The judge looked about him. He was sat before the fire naked save for his
breeches and his hands rested palm down upon his knees. His eyes were empty
slots. None among the company harbored any notion as to what this attitude
implied, yet so like an icon was he in his sitting that they grew cautious
and spoke with circumspection among themselves as if they would nto waken
something that had better been left sleeping.
Blood Merdian by Cormac McCarthy
--
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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