There was a mystery about that first moment of creation, something that caused us to linger,to look back into the uncreated darkness;but the rush and race of life was on,the wild mating of molecules.Life,harsh and beautiful,neither cruel nor kind;elements fusing and breaking
unstoppable,gorged with nascent fire.
We had flowed in the earth from the beginning,a river of iron slowly setting in beds of rock.There we rested in the heart of the warm earth,and the music of an innocent creation was our song.
But a day came when all that changed,pain welled up through creation like a great wave,and the music ached with a strange dissonance.
Many circles later I was mined by slaves,brave broken men and women,who wept in their sleep under the cold stars.By day they groaned under loads too heavy for human hands,they groaned under
the whip,and they groaned as they dragged me up into the sunlight with bloody hands.
It was nothing to me to be forged in the great heat of a furnace by the hands of artisans.The affairs of men do not touch us even though we are in their power,and although it was through them that we learned pain,little did I know how much I would see of that pain as I was carried in the soldier's pouch to the hill.
Suddenly many eyes were upon me,angry hateful full of burning lust and the earth seemed strangely crowded
The hammer fell.It seemed to have descended a vast distance down through the heavens.It was wielded by a man but it hit me like a meteor,I ripped into his flesh and felt as though I bored for millions of miles before biting into the wood.The elements trembled ,space shook and would have collapsed had something not restrained it.Even time itself shuddered to contain such a moment,but I held firm.
The hand gripped me and I knew;I remembered searching the uncreated darkness,looking to see what can not be seen and here somehow it held me in the agony of love.
From its great hidden depths welled up a river of liquid ruby,each drop more precious than a galaxy of stars,than all the races of men and angels,and yet here was a ocean,and still I held.
I realised that the hand I held was holding all creation in its palm and the sea of blood flooded every part right to its endless edge,and every moment of memory and hope were washed.It was as if the travail under which all creation groaned was being drawn away,but in some mysterious way
it remained.Amidst a shivering world two things were steady;the hand and the nail.
When the darkness came something began to happen which I can not understand,and although I describe it in my way,it is no explanation.It was clear that I was supporting far more than a man in his dying
struggle,and more than a betrayed creator.Something beyond the elements coming from the darkness,was pouring into him.I felt its deadly cold but he did not die.This went on until he uttered a terrible yelp of a cry,then we began the descent.
It was as if we shrank,becoming ever and ever smaller,down and down travelling on beyond the tiniest specks of matter,into the beyond which is within the heart of everything.Into the smallness which has no limit except to him who made it.He carried the darkness down and down,beyond all things until the darkness itself was no more.And the flood had engulfed everything from the greatest to the smallest.
We were on the hill again,he uttered his final cry and was dead.Soon he was taken away,and I was discarded.The whole world seemed discarded that day as night fell and I began to rust in the dew.
Strange things happened over the next few days.There were sounds of dismay,and then of laughter; of war's joy and triumph.There tears and sighs,rumblings and shakings;all coming from somewhere beyond this world and passing through it barely noticed.Then all was quiet and in the moments before dawn I saw a vision of a great hand hidden in darkness unfurling the new born stars,I saw the hands of anguished people reaching up to heaven,and the hands of slaves hanging down hopelessly.Then a wonderful thing happened,the mutilated music of creation suddenly became beautifuly harmonious;the pain of nature's fractured song was lifted into a grand mysterious harmony.In that moment timeless and swift, the hands were engulfed in one great hand,in which there was a wound;the wound that I had made,in the hand that I had held.Then I understood.
I am rusted away,washed by the rains,blown by the winds,I am countless unseen grains.Rust.The travail of nature's song continues but hope dances in among it and one day the mysterious anthem will return for ever.
Wilf 04/2000
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