AMONG THE RUINS

The moon laid a thin veil over the thickets surrounding Heliopolis, and calm took the reins of all beings. The fearful ruins appeared like giants mocking the vicissitudes of the nights.

In that hour two forms flowed out of nothingness, like vapors rising from an azure lake. On a marble column formed by time from that strange building, they sat contemplating their surroundings, surroundings that told of scenes of enchantment. After a while, one of them raised his head and spoke in a voice that sounded like an echo in the caves of distant valleys.

“These are the remains of temples I built for you, my beloved. Over there are the ruins of a castle I raised to please you. It has been pulled down and nothing remains but a trace to tell the nations of the glory that I spent my life to proclaim and the might that I compelled the weak to glorify. Consider, my beloved, how the elements have razed the city I built so strongly and how succeeding generations have belittled the philosophy that I held. Oblivion has surrounded the kingdom I made great, and nothing remains to me save the moments of love to which your beauty gave birth and the effects of the beauty to which your love gave life. I built a temple in Jerusalem for worship. The priests sanctified it, and the passing days crushed it. I built a temple within my breast. God sanctified it, and no force can overpower it. I poured out my life seeking the meaning of external things, explaining the actions of matter. Man says, “How wise a king you are!” The angels say, “How poor a sage he is!” Then I saw you, my beloved, and I sang you a hymn of love and yearning. The angels rejoiced, but man took no notice. The days of my reign were but barriers between my thirsty spirit and the fair spirit established in beings. When I saw you, love awoke, those barriers were torn down. I regretted the life I had squandered by yielding to rivers of despair and reckoning as vanity all things under the sun. I wove chain mail and hammered shields, and all the tribes feared me. When love illumined me, even my own people despised me. But when death came, it cast this chain mail and these shields in the dust, and my love bore me up to God.”

After a silence, the second form replied, “Just as the flower takes its fragrance and its life from the dust, so too the soul acquires power and wisdom from the weakness and folly of matter.”

At that the two forms intermingled as a single form and vanished. After a moment these words reverberated through the air around that place, “Only love will last through eternity, for they are alike.”

BEFORE SUICIDE

BEFORE SUICIDE

Yesterday the woman whom my heart loved sat in this still and lonely room.