Jesse Ball: The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

But don’t be concerned for me. This sort of thing is what everyone does when everyone does it. And everyone who doesn’t does play along, or at least watches from the wings as those who do do what they do, whether well or wantonly.

In another hour, we shall burn the town to bits. I’ve always wanted to, and now we’re in cahoots. It’s a wonderful thing, being in cahoots. One can’t help but prefer it. We’ll all sit on the hill outside of town and laugh and hold hands with pretty girls and boys while pretty girls and boys laugh and hold hands with us.

And the sky will stream fitfully across the sky, its sails filled by the same wind that prompted us this morning when we rose, rosy cheeked and hamhanded from our all-too-narrow beds, filled with the same rippling restless pleasure that even now sits like a lantern in my youthful throat.

A ninety-five-year-old pilgrim is at the door.

She’s knocked three times. Each time

she knocks, a knuckle in her hand breaks.

She wants a cup of water.

The desert here is wide.

In fact, this is the widest point.

Sometimes I like to go up to the roof

and ring our huge bell.

The sound floats in the air

like some hundred ships

all tossed on a single wave.

It moves out across the sand,

and nothing stops it. I think it can

go forever. I think of places the sound

goes. Cottages, little green

hedgerows, gardeners looking up.

“Oh, it’s time for lunch,” they must say,

“there’s the bell.”

So many people had come by asking for water that day

that I took the last one with me to the well.

We both climbed in. It is, you know, one of my favorite places.

At the bottom, I have set up a fine little room

with soft cushions and a phonograph.

“What would you like to hear,” I ask her.

She says, “Mozart, I guess,” and darts

her little tongue at me, coyly disengages a dress strap.

“Oh you deipnosophists are all alike!” I shout,

and put on Brahms to spite her.

In response, she wags her tail. It is long and soft,

most alluring. Alluring, one might say,

if one lived in a house in the desert.

Who knew, I ask you, who knew when I was a child

that I would one day be made a present

of such a lovely girl as this?

That season there were comedies in every playhouse.

One drought had followed another until certain countries

relied solely upon humor to survive their harsh winters.

At the time I had just begun an illustrious career

as a trainer of soldiers. I didn’t further the war — it was

against my interest. But I taught one skill to the troops:

how to stand immediately behind their opponents.

A fight would start. The enemy would lunge,

and there I would be, standing behind him,

from where I might do what I liked to help or hinder

his passage through the war. The trick, of course,

was in a particular grin and a twisting of the limbs

which accompanies the sudden shift right or left.

The whole thing was rather funny, or so I thought,

as the enemy was employing experts to accomplish

precisely the same gain. The upshot? A battle

in which two armies twirled around like dancers

in some avant-garde ballet. Everyone came out

to the countryside to watch. It was the start

of a short but bloodless epoch in world history.

And then one day the pilgrimage route changed. No one wanted to see the pillar in the desert, and so I had no more visitors. It was sad really, or so I thought at first. But then I went back to the history book I was writing.

Such a book. .

It doesn’t even use our verbs. They’re too

pointed. Only causeless words

can please, a record without

a point of view. History proper,

for the first time.

Every physical change

in the world listed, along with its place.

I can work only at night, while I’m asleep.

Dreaming, one has time for such things.

Nonetheless, I fall behind. If only I had

an assistant, a really clever one. .

All hermits begin by pretending to be hermits.

And by liking birds.

In the house of my sleeping eye the veins of wood

run from the furniture down into the floor.

When I lay my hands upon the table’s surface

the entire feathered expanse

shifts in flight.

And when you are finally caught and questioned,

it is discovered, sadly, that you know

nothing of use. Your captors exchange glances, nod.

You are released in the freedom of some afternoon,

some autumn of the year, your coat, hat, returned

as if to continue your life. Now it is you

in the world again. In yellowing rooms, life

becomes no more than the places where it occurs.

At the pier in darkness, parades will cross the water,

visible but once. Or I could say

I saw the wind coming hard along the river touching all it passed.

How are things consequent? When they catch you

again, what will you say? That all things

may be weighed, may be raised and weighed

by two human hands?

I stand by the pump with a deaf girl.

She is on the verge of a breakthrough.

I am very earnest and sedulous.

I am possibly the best teacher

who has ever lived. I lever the pump’s

arm, and water begins to flow.

Meanwhile, in my days as a

snake-charmer, a great painter

is sketching me. He’s on holiday

and has inserted a slight grin

onto this quiet face.

I wasn’t grinning. You mustn’t

suppose I was grinning.

I’ve always known day by day

my real work approaches.

Not for anything would I grin,

not even once.

The work means too much.

By an old mill my father is waiting

with hundreds of other fathers.

I would like for them to keep

each other company,

but from here it is plain—

none of them is speaking.

What’s that in his hand?

An old leather wallet.

He’s taking something out of it,

a picture, I wonder of whom.

Who next will go to join him,

walking long there

in the early places of my life?

Nevertheless the war continued

trembling the cupboards

where we slept, cracking the long

stone walkways of the village, as

if there were no other way to act

successfully in this foolish place,

as if were we in its place, this war,

we had no light but brute gleaming.

A race of men who can turn themselves into not animals

but inanimate objects. Europeans reach this tribe

by boat. What a grand city, they say. What fine broad

avenues, such as you might see in Paris. How lovely

the women in their long satin dresses, with their

fans and shuddering hair. Much feasting goes on.

Days later, the discovery is made. Orders are sent back

across the sea to be confirmed by the Queen.

Orders are confirmed. The populace is brought out

into a series of aesthetically ideal city squares

and forced at gunpoint to change directly

into gold. They object at first, then the King