The Garden is Hidden - Part i

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Passions in Prose

The Garden is Hidden - Part i

j0n4th4n
Member

since 2003-03-11

Posts 94

0 posted 2004-05-10 05:04 PM

Arzaqueezar the Twenty-ninth, fifty-fourth Ruler Imperial of the High-kingdom of Mablazeara, sat legs-out beneath the tree in his garden. He was of the age to have had a grown son, who now entered the still air with almost-silent steps: 'O my Father I have seen a vision,' he said.

King Arzaqeezar turned swiftly around and beheld his son - this was man not tall not short, not wise not foolish; his brown eager face lacked beard, unlike his father; and he was naked from the waist upward (as is the custom) - and the king said,

'My son, it is not for such as you to be blinded in daylight, nor startled at night by these wayward flash-bulbs in your mind; but you should attend to and practice your studies; leaving these vague and difficultly expressed areas that things such as what you call visions are a represeanting of to the magicians and soothsayers.'

His son came near him, laid a hand on his also bare shoulder, and said, 'My Father and O-the-strength-of-my-legs, it is neither in day or at night that I am arrested by these strange sights,' the King Arzaqeezar looked at him, eyes an old, golden-green, and the son continued, 'but in the in-between between the dreams of sleep and the dream-that-is-waking that these visions behold me.'

'Why, O my wayward loin-sprung and pain-of-thy-mother, do you speak of the vision beholding you and not of you being the beholder?'

'Indeed, O my part-maker, you are most discerning in your ears; but I have not spoken erringly. My father, I say it is I who am beheld because the sight that greets me (and it has been eleven times until today) seems to my mind to be startled by me as much as I am to her; for behold! it is a woman I have seen; and at every occurence she grows more beautiful, and her noticing-of-me becomes richer.'

'A woman!' exclaimed the king, surprising for a second his outward-reaching son. 'I might have seen it sooner. My son, "Lead not thyself into the bosom of a woman-who-hath-no-name, lest thou shouldst become a man who hath no soul"; and I say this: a vision of a woman is a thousand times worse than the nameless-female.'

'She is indeed peculiar O my bringer-into-existance, that is certain, but I feel she is good; what has drawn me, however, is her eyes, these - '

'"A good woman is like unto weak wine: she bringeth good benefit but mean pleasure",' said his father, quoting one of the Philosophers, trying to dissuade his son now with a reversed method.

'Ah but, O-the-imparter-of-wisdom, what she seems to offer me is as beyond pleasure as wine itself is beyond the grapes.'

'Has she spoken then?'

'Her eyes hath spoken a page.' The king's only son Kelzaqeezur walked now towards the bee-house and peered in, looking at honey. 'Has not one of the Poets said, "The eyes are bigger than the mouth"?'

'Ah, but mouth and eyes both lie, my son. No, leave your boyish fantasy and think on your future wife - who is real, not this (no doubt) rebellious dream-image that has escaped the confines of mere slumber to haunt and confuse you even in your waking.'

Satisfied with his speaking, this king stretched his trouserd legs untill they were taught and outwards. The curly-and-pointed-toed slippers his son wore made no noise as he walked back from the bee-house. Kelzaqeezur licked honey from his fingers, and with angry bees hornetting around his small ears and modest midriff, said,

'O-my-father - dost thou think I am mad?'

His father ignored him (as is the custom for such a question); instead he said, 'Forget-you this fake woman, my heir-in-waiting; eat honey from bees only for now.'

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