“I hate for you to board the shop and leave …”

“Am I the tradesman that my father was, while still he was alive?” he asked.

“You both were good, but somehow wood is never kind to your great hands. Your father’s hands never paid the pain it cost you, just to love his trade.”

She looked down at the gentle, suffering hand that held her own. Somewhere in her swimming recollection, she remembered the same hand with infant fingers that had clutched the ringlets of her hair and reached to feel the leathered face of Eastern Kings. But he could not remember that.

They walked still further without speaking.

“MOTHER, I AM THE SINGER!” He blurted out at once.

“I know,” she said.

“I love the Father-Spirit more than life. He has sent me to the crowded ways to sing the Ancient Star-Song.”

“I know,” she said again. “I heard the Ancient Star-Song only once. It was the very night that you were born. And all these years, my son, I’ve known that you would come to board the shop someday. Can you sing the Star-Song yet?”

“I can,” he answered back.

They neared a house and entered. They shared a simple meal and sat in silence. And the song, which they alone of all the world did know, was lingering all around them in the air.

She had not heard its strains for thirty years but hungered for its music.

He had not sung it for an afternoon but longed to have its fluid meaning coursing through his soul.

Of course the song began.

VII

Before the song all music came like muted, empty octaves begging a composer’s pen. The notes cried silently for paper staves and kept their sound in theory only.

In the beginning was the song of love.

Alone in empty nothingness and space

It sang itself through vaulted halls above

Reached gently out to touch the Father’s face.

And all the tracklessness where worlds would be

Cried “Father” through the aching void. Sound tore

The distant chasm, and eternity

Called back—“I love you Son—sing Troubadour.”

His melody fell upward into joy

And climbed its way in spangled rhapsody.

Earthmaker’s infant stars adored his boy,

And blazed his name through every galaxy.

“Love,” sang the Spirit Son and mountains came.

More melody, and life began to grow.

He sang of light, and darkness fled in shame

Before a universe in embryo.

Then on the naked ground the Troubadour

Knelt down and firmly sang a stronger chord.

He scooped the earth dust in his hand

And worked the clay till he had molded man.

They laid him down beneath primeval trees

And waited there. They loved him while he slept

And both rejoiced as he began to breathe

A triumph etched in brutal nakedness.

“I am a Man!” the sun-crowned being sang.

He stood and brushed away the clinging sand.

He knew from where his very being sprang.

Wet clay still dripped from off the Singer’s hands.