Member-only story
The Deepest Language
Sitting on a bench, soiled with my regret for the coming of the morning, I stop remembering that I try to forget you. I close my eyes… The thieves only want our sorcery; the lovers, the flesh; the preachers, our souls; the murderers, life. You can take mine away: I challenge you to change something about it.
I turn my head back to feel the rustling of the leaves above me.. I’m in the woods, in a field… It’s time when Time disguises himself as a sweeper and God maybe as a trapper. He, the greedy, the stubborn; he, who does not allow to see a pearl lost among the crowd of oysters at the doors of the taverns. Our Father who art in heaven….. Will I ever see an old man come, with a grey coat, with feet full of mud for having crossed God knows which river to meet me?
He’d drop himself on the bank, clenching his closed fist a precious gift that would be enough to change everything. I’d split the fingers slowly, one by one, with caution, for the gift might fly away… What would you carry in your hand? A bird, a seed, a knife, a key to open the canned heart?
~ Marguerite Yourcenar
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Judaism is my mother tongue yet in matters of the spirit I strive to be multilingual. In the end, however, the deepest language of the soul is silence.
