Almost with the nonchalance of a grave, the dusk settled in by bird whispers and cat anguish, as broken steel against the world's marshmallow back. Plumes of half feathery gust flamed across the silhouette of a hill top town, and some great cauldron of boil and toil had surely been knocked carelessly asunder in heaven, its liquids gushing out East and West, tumbling in viscous waves, devouring blue shade and fluff clouds, like the moth balls of a thousand old attics. We journey in silence and we arrive in silence, forgetful of our hosts and blundering sadly when offered refreshment. Smooth tile floors of a strangers home, with scented adoring wood and house airs, a book shelf of bibles with Tom Sawyer mischief making in the garden; fairies unlike butterflies and unlike rain drops splash into the too clean fish pond; such a memory to arrive at such a time before the old Cathedral dooms day bells buckle derelict soundings with flirt and ding. Three mighty spires pierced the angelic obscurity, two forewords and the lesser tower to the stern, forming a V shape implausible ocean vessel; she arrives from the earth, sudden dawn maelstrom and the fluttering of coo cooing from old timbre rafters, through and because of this assured winged choir she materialises.
Where lofty hearted ravens 'Karawk'ed' in dull almost bell tones, silent streets of cobblestone flanked by quiet tea shop ease and dry book shop lore, climbed wearily up the steep hill road that leads to the old castle gates, and within lay old town. Big yellow stone edifices cracked and smooth in places by hundreds of years of altering rains, muddy faces and love making in the quiet pre Victorian stoicism, hay bed and tender skin to render skins useless protest; her spine bubbles with warm ever fading waves of some kissing lust and bodily sweat. His hair to tickle her throat in the gurgling sensuality of repose and softly spoken loved voices, that globules upon the mud floor, to run in streamlets to the street; where other intense human love making has spilled its own pools of gobbet sex winds and chill mystery down the drains until it reaches the ocean and there transforms into a thousand coral reefs of diamond sequin sparkling. A transparent delicate negligee like fog, settled upon the murky lamp lights and third story windows, where ominous faces glared with dour satisfaction at the cobblestone and old kings throne, high majesty knights with austere faiths, rolling upon large steeds of downy flaxen loveliness, such are young virgin maids to throw their appetite upon men and feast luridly ever more, until the virgin antiquity has become blasphemous obstinacy. The king dreams through the hamlet as weary shag haired men leave their crooning, thigh rubbing purring women to settle alone upon the dark could be divan could be flirtatious desire. What satiate a man to brood in ill temper when his woman caresses her own inner thighs for his absence? Where did simple illiterate human tenderness go she asks in frill backs, capuchins and fantail curiosity? She oversaw the cooking of the world in the tender youthful madness that became swirling masses of gaseous potential, she gave birth to bread and thought. Now to guise her foreboding primordial limbs with a sigh but not without haste or malice, sight or sound a curious refugee from the universes infancy. She would not call herself 'god' but she smiles knowingly through the gloriously indolent temperament of saintliness when others do.
The carpenter sat upon some crumbling bleach white wall, which had the texture of sun burnt snake skin; the sky was high and blue and only vague wisps of old watery dough like clouds to obscure the limitless heavens above. Behind him was his small village, quiet almost but for the warbling of caged foul; he had come to understand everything and felt alone. He ate his bread and cheese whilst watching a shepherd herd bored goats into a rickety stick coral beside the river. The river flowed on and on, he did not know where, but when he died he hoped someone would tell him. He spied the river brown, worm across the land to the Dead Sea; it became thin and indistinguishable after a few miles. His clothes were itching him and his heart shuddered painfully out of no other malady but wisdom. It was too early for flies and the morning was fine. He scratched his beard whilst in the midst of slow thoughtful mastication, thinking of Yisraela Tzefira, they had met some past hour in the night, she was lost he was wandering. In those long nights before his 30th birthday he would often walk alone through the deserted sleepy lands between the towns of Nain and Cana. She was not startled or fearful, but they sat together quietly beside a shadowy murmur stream and how they talked about the night.
"I look up into the stars and I feel weak and pointless
"Verily, verily I say to you Yisraela, until a women fears the dark sky she shall never enjoy the light he said softly, tossing small stones into the river, she turned and gazed long at his severe features, his handsome face illuminated by the pale moonlight fluttering up from the stream passing.
"I suddenly feel afraid for you
"Do not be afraid
"I think we shall never meet again she said and she wept, and her tears caused him to ache, her love was lost into the long stream.
"We shall all meet again, I promise
"I do not believe you she wept as he held her hand in his, his was the hand of a carpenter, rough and intuitive, hers was the soft petal flesh of a phantom, beautiful and giving.
"Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
He felt glad suddenly to have recalled her long luscious brown her, he willowy fabric body, sweet smile and loving kindness how she sang and played, he shook his head sadly and scratched his palms, suddenly glancing down at his tough muddy hand he felt panic sweep through him. He bit down into his lump of cheese and let go all that he had to forget. He warmed suddenly in the rays of curious light there the day warmed in wild abandon. He began peering at the dark skinned shepherd boy with stick in his hand, in once white but now murky rags, with thread bare eyes and no sandals. He tried to calculate how many young boys would be born into this egg shell world, hundreds of years hence, he wondered what type of shepherd boys would there be and would they have sandals. The cerulean depths above him reminded him of the ocean he had never seen or heard, the ocean, he often feared that some faltering ocean wavered above his quiet mind; countless cubic gallons of salty fish water waiting to come plunging upon him, he often dreamt it too. Suddenly his poignant eyes saw an old women, raggedy looking, plodding up the Jordan road, the heat caused the distance to shimmer like transparent boiling pig fat, his heart yearned to speak to the women, he knew not why. He recalled lepers from Nazareth, lepers could be cured and he knew this.
Neither a crisp packet nor leaf stirred in the heavy dusk amour such is the hour and the way of old/new towns, yet distant and fumbling, ever coming, like a small train, racing breathlessly along the gutter rails of life arrives the pigeon woman. With rodent furiousness and sudden lurching clumsiness came the old pigeon woman, with her shopping bag on wheels, and her frame bent as if some monstrous artist had developed her frame from old salty whale bones, her arms heavy and sensible they hungered like stained timbre of some reminiscent instance. this evocative urchin and oily rotten teeth brine could not ever weep again at the impossible darkening skies. Through the fog she came, diffident and assured, composed from the ephemeral wastes of creations dusty cottage. She appears falling upwards with the half amused carefree swagger of carelessness that poisons the undue wise to merely aged spiritless provocative wisdoms. Past Victoria's Tea House she plods, pausing momentarily to inspect the price of tea, shaking her head in confusion. She liked a nice cup of tea, suddenly her mind fluttered back through endless whispering pages of memory, like a dusty novel of promises in the sweet scented airs of antiquity; she smiled to see him alone upon the wall, she smiled to remember his hand holding hers by the river of loves lost chances. From some great depth she ached a romantic agony that only a thousand high hill equinox pyres could express and then falling on, clumsy and articulate at the same chill fog chime of ages he waddled away. Where the immense tri-towers of some ecstasy of theology warped timbre curvature and masonry that towered higher further still, the priest dwelt in stone and candle whilst the exhausted peasantry died in water logged muds by the canal pool. For they shall call upon him, be he will not answer, they shall seek him early but they will not find him, and nor could she in her daze and dusk solitude. For she stoops for a penny upon the cobblestone, resting in a moss covered ageless crevice, and returning to her natural crooked position; she inspects the penny and with sudden bell clang 'clunggggg comes time clunggggg old wines clunggggg bronze thyme pots and a host of fledgling furry children with grass in their hair and sticky sweetness about their forgiving tasting lips clungggg clungggg clunggggd'. It is not god that calls her but the relic and edifice of old time, with its cast iron bells, wrought by shag haired smithies with gaunt child like eyes, and savaged children with eyes of saints and mud, this the old pigeon lady knew, for her feminine slithering lead her through long lost meadows of contemplative saint's, Narcissus or Goldmund as Lucifer to Jesus.
