A Man Whose
sleight of hand was so fast that even the flourished points of his tricks could not be seen. He would pull coins from behind people’s ears, but the audience would see neither the hand as it hid the coin, nor the hand as it took the coin away. His art was too great. The best of his tricks, to circle the globe in less than a second, impressed no one, as he, for reasons of his own, would always end up precisely where he had been standing before. “He’s a fraud!” they chanted. And they were right, in a way. Someone else would have had to come along and teach the audience to see, before they could ever appreciate this dancing of a human hand upon a second hand.
A Gift
A heavy wooden staff is presented as a gift. In 7 of 9 possible worlds, it is a stern staff, some length of thickly carved wood, a strength to the traveler. In the 8th world, separate, it acts and speaks upon its own, casting a moving shadow, bending its long neck beneath a canopy of leaves. We may not name it there, for there it names itself. And in the 9th, that farthest of far places?
Questions of the 9th remain unanswered, for statement there is nothing but swiftness of motion.
The Carriage Driver
In the midst of a terrible storm, a carriage comes thundering down a narrow drive, and pulls up at the entrance to a large mansion. The carriage doors are thrown open and a man with a haughty, powerful bearing exits the carriage and goes to the house. Hours pass. The storm is a brutal call from an angry host, and the tree line flails upon the near hills; the mud churns, pounded by the water’s ceaseless assault. Still the carriage driver waits, trembling. He wants to rub the horses with a soft blanket, but he cannot, for the mud about their hooves is too deep now for him to stand in. In fact, the carriage has now sunk so that only half of its wheels rise out of the mud. The horses are curiously dead, slumped in their harness, unmoving. Soon the mud will cover them. Then and only then will he knock upon the house’s great door. He will not speak when the door is answered, but will simply point, dumbfounded, at the carriage as it sinks from sight.
Three Visitors
It happened that a man returned from his day’s labor to find three young women living in his house. The first was black-haired, the second yellow-haired, and the hair of the third was scarlet. They gave him different reasons for their arrival. The first said they had been drowned in a lake by their father, who could not bear their taking lovers, and this is where they had emerged.
The second said they were tinkers, and had come to fix his pots. The third said they were commissioned by a lord to find the only honest man in Christendom. The beauty of but one of these girls would have lit the rooms of his house as by some small descended sun. The presence of three was uncanny and hardly to be borne. “I think you have come to take a husband,” said the man. And the girls laughed, and it was true that one would remain. But which? Each day, the three would tell stories, and he would guess at who was lying. And always he would catch the black-haired girl, while the others could deceive him. For her lies were grand, implausible affairs, and a signal delight. The girls slept in his bed, all three, while he laid out a mat on the kitchen floor, and wrapped himself in a single woolen blanket. Each night he would hear their murmuring, as they composed the next day’s lies. Finally, he took to writing these lies down in a leather book. For one year they stayed, and when they left all three left together, in the night. And when he looked at the book he had kept, he saw that he had only ever written down the tales the black-haired girl had told. He saw also, that he had been wrong, and that some tales he had thought false, now seemed true. A book, he thought to himself, a book of lies and truths. All equally redeeming, all damning, all brought upon us by these ghosts, our selves, and where we walk, where we have walked, where we will walk yet, guided by a chorus whose nature must always be hidden.
EXCEPTED
A Measure
And therefore, simply keep a cup, dusted lightly with poison, within your cupboard. When the time comes, let your fellow pour the drink, first in your cup, then in his. Drink well and long to various healths. The health of life. The health of love. And the health of hate. By then, he will be beyond help, or health, and you may say what you like for as long as you like, as well or as poorly as you know how.
picnic in ten years’ time — 2004
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composed of: BESTIARY nos. 1–17 and LATER MANUAL
If, in a crowd of thousands there is preserved one who knows me, then I go free.
1 — Bestiary nos. 1–17
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The first dream in which I had the sensation of my true situation while asleep occurs in the 207th night; the second in the 214th.
Hervey de Saint-Denys, 1867
It Was a Later Century
I woke in the midst of a deep sleep,
some sleep such as comes over
the entirety of the world, that lasts
an infinite and indefinite period;
that, when finished, is scarcely marked
by those who slept. Out in the world
things were quiet. I went to the house
of the girl I love. She was asleep.
I dressed her, and took her with me
over my shoulder. By the river I picked
cornflowers. It was a glorious day.
From a great distance I saw a picnic,
a party of revelers, a dog. But so far,
would we ever reach them?
My girl did not answer, but looked
lovely I may tell you, in blue cotton.
I began to cross the plain.
If the day stays still we may
yet reach the other side,
to picnic there in ten years’ time.
Arravelli’s “View of Loum,” 1542
There are three walking by the small river,
dividing the world’s belongings
into three. A hatted man in a road-stained cloak.
To the left, a miller bent upon a stick, who seems,
though crippled, to ask no help of his daughter,
she who wanders there
in the composition, the daylight rolled up
like a map against her scarlet hair.
They have been talking some time it seems
without passing beyond that row of hills
the young traveler would have crossed to come