The Word – trying to remember how the Bible goes

 The Word


In the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and full of light after that there were witnesses and angels and a garden and a vague sense that power existed in the sky and flowed down through us all when we did things right.  There were apples and a worm and pillars of salt and wings that melted when they flew up nearer the sun but that might be ephemeral    and a man who walked on water and  made bread come falling like the droppings of swarms of seagulls from the skies. There were chariots and a man dressed in red with cloven feet which were somehow terrible but how I never understood and fire in spouts and screams and torrents and rich with brimstone.  There was crossed wood and candles, many candles.  There were words that soothed the foreheads and made the feet less tired.  Words that flowed around like blood and made your full heart fluster. There were palms and soldiers gambling and  men in robes with money in stacks at a temple which had pillars and might have resembled Karnak.  God was a great dark brooding mass of space cloud glowing verily with a deep resonating voice that boomed of the end of times and in between of sins and sinning (which were things that seemed so alien begetting begatting behesting behoving begivening beunbelieving).  This god had names many names  and there were people who could say them all and sing them. mem mem mem emmem mem em em em am em em mem mem mem em em em em am em em mmm em em mem mem  em. And would. Used them as spells to weave in the air.  Very very the very air. The villages were full of listening ears.  There were travellers.  There were explorers.  There were soldiers.  There were big men.  There were rough men.  Skin was coarse and dried by sand and sun.  There were kings everywhere and songsters palming their voices in great upward soarings.   Know this of me I shall deliver.  Turn to your neighbour.  Touch and hold.  The light is shining.  Climb up you are no longer ill you can walk.  The end of days up there full of dust stacked and bulwarked against dissolution. Brimstone bubbling.  The fish gone.  The young all dead.   The blood running.  Things falling from the skies.  Fire in streams.  Delilah, Python, Hetz, Scud, Al-Hussein, Al-Abbas, Al-Abid, Al-Sammoud, Al-Ababil, Fakr, Tammuz, Fahad, Patriot, Tomahawk, Granit, Bazalt, Granat.  A voice on a screen talking.  A man with a trumpet blasting. The days eternal.   The whole thing descended and rabid.  Belief and denial.   Forgiven and unforgivable.  I can’t remember much more. Just voices and seeing fire.  And men in the sand saying how great this all is when really absolutely light or no light it is not any such thing at all.
 
 
Peter Finch
Illustration Nick Victor

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