3819. 24th and SHEPPENARD

24th and SHEPPENARD

They told them to bring the table, bring forth the

magic cloth, and 'don't forget the most magisterial

thing of all' : the gold. Vast gold of kings, huge gold

of jewelers who weigh, fraught gold of the politics of

sweat and forced labor. Then came the next step:

they brought forth the head oracle, prized skull, dead

of old, which spoke. 'I may be dead or I may be Death

itself. Neither will be known; yet you hold me, in your

hand I am. Listen carefully to what you hear, and

moreso to that which you do not hear - that is the 

more important of the two. Time is a tide with no

subsistence, and it slowly slides towards you.

Beware then of all things, beware of Time.'

-

No one understood, nor spoke. I sat and watched;

I smoked (I do not smoke). I drank (I do not drink).

Everything was out of order : this weird dissemblance

of a place and moment, the many voices struck dumb,

all those men - tenured and important to themselves,

now knowing nothing; they all appeared as a chimera

would in a shadowy box of darkness and gloom.

-

Over at the counter, Marlena was standing. As I

looked over, I could only notice, once, that

she was disappearing  -  gone like vapor,

finished, and no more. It was 24th and

Sheppenard, that fabled street of old,

from which no man ever had returned.