PAUL

So what did you say to that great face that came out of the sky at midnight, and descended upon you as you slept? He speaks strange words to me; I cannot understand a thing. I am shaking; I am full up with power and glory; my face shines like the sun; my hands flash like blades in the light.

And I saw him rise up out of the earth: he was made of a dense blackness: he was a great shadow, and no light could escape his skin. He carried with him diamonds, and scattered those diamonds all about the cornfields: and great monstrosities grew where he scattered the diamonds, monsters made of roaches and rats and fish: it was all very awful and wild: and I closed my eyes from the vision, but the visions kept coming, and I fled into the wide world and traveled, trying to escape; I was desperate.

There was nothing left of the flesh and blood: he had taken it all into his belly, and been full up of glory and power. He raids churches for the sacrosanct wafer and wine: he lives on nothing else, and is filled with the substance of the Lord. What is this wooly hair, this brazen skin; what are these large warm hands? And his eyes are dense as collapsed stars: he radiates out his revenge: he can kill with a look, and his name is Terror. He has come on the clouds in glory and power: we are lost. He carries with him a dried she-wolf’s head, and wears a she-bear’s pelt over his back: this is his scepter and his crown: he is made of the thick wilderness through and through: he is made of hair and teeth and paws. Where are your massive statues? Where are your shrines and your gods? I shall tell you a secret: he is a bearer of mystery and a wielder of power.

The sun gives growth: everything is full up of life: the sunlight is the holy inspiration, and fills everything up with a power, the engine of the living. We wander the old graveyards; we are ghosts and we cannot bear our hunger; we see a great army coming out of the sky, and crossing the rivers in the sky; we see the gardens high in the air, the place of rivers and cool water and warm light; we see gardens in the heavens with rivers flowing beneath; and we see the inhabitants of the earth under a deep sleep, in a great stupor, moving about like machines, unknowing. They don’t understand a thing, not a thing.

We live like the shadows: at night we enlarge ourselves and cover the face of the earth: we see the abode of light above: we see the inhabitants of the earth wandering about, aimless and blind, under deep anesthesia, unable to understand the mysteries, filled with dreams and illusions. This is your little world: you live under an upturned bowl: you cannot see the true nature of things.

The army was encamped upon the hillside. Tent after tent, fire after fire, clothesline after clothesline: for miles and miles stretched the army encampment. So where were the soldiers? Were they made of light, and did they flash from here to there as fast as light? Were their weapons made of light, was their skin made of light, were their uniforms made of light, and did they flash all about the countryside, killing army after army, man after man, child after child, hamlet after hamlet, city after city, nation after nation? Was anybody able to resist them, could they possibly be stopped? Did they not invade the heart of Rome, and overtake Rome, and storm the palaces and burn the jewels and gold? Did they have a contempt for everything precious, for precious metals, precious jewels, precious life; and did they flash all about the land, killing everything, burning grain stores, poisoning wells, salting the earth, growing monstrosities in the place of crops? Was there anything anywhere that could stop them? I see you cannot stand this vision anymore: you are a little child, and you have taken enough disaster into your body for now; any more would wear your body down, burn you to ashes, make you drop down dead. Little child, you can see great things are at stake.

My child, do not make yourself weary with crucibles: you are a little thing, a tiny piece of flesh: you cannot save or destroy the world on your own: do not take your mission to be very important: do not take your life to be too holy: the holy have a hard road: prophets are half-mad: do not go mad with the inspiration that fills you: you are a little thing, a little crab at the seaside: do not take your life to be too great: you will suffer for it, and end up insane.

But what is this nakedness? What is this utter stripping away of everything solid, of everything with form and substance? What is this buoyancy I feel in my spirit? Why am I rising up into the firmament and seeing visions of rivers and gardens and greenness everywhere? What was that terrible tooth I saw on my kitchen counter, that sharp fang?—and what were those shark jaws doing lying across my bed? I am a tentmaker: nothing more. I hope I am righteous. I shall be stricken with the staff, and if water flows out of my mouth, it shall be sweet water, pure; if I am consumed in flame, I am a madman, foaming at the mouth, tested with holiness and turned into ash. This is my secret death: I cannot open the scroll: you can see my shame: I am hungry like the dead. I am Paul. Saul is the devil sitting deep within the soil of my heart, and his flowers are weary of blooming.