The Child

1
‘What of the night?’ they ask.
No answer comes.
For the blind Time gropes in a maze and knows not its path or purpose.
The darkness in the valley stares like the dead eye-sockets of a giant, the
  clouds like a nightmare oppress the sky, and the massive shadows lie
  scattered like the torn limbs of the night.
A lurid glow waxes and wanes on the horizon, is it an ultimate threat from an
  alien-star, or an elemental hunger licking the sky?
Things are deliriously wild, they are a noise whose grammar is a groan, and
  words smothered out of shape and sense.
They are the refuse, the rejections, the fruitless failures of life, abrupt ruins of
  prodigal pride, fragments of a bridge over the oblivion Of a vanished
  stream, godless shrines that shelter reptiles, marble steps that lead to
  blankness.
Sudden tumults rise in the sky and wrestle and a startled shudder runs along
  the sleepless hours.
Are they from desperate floods hammering against their cave walls, or from
  some fanatic storms whirling and howling incantations?
Are they the cry of an ancient forest flinging up its hoarded fire in a last
  extravagant suicide, or screams of a paralytic crowd scourged by lunatics
  blind and deaf?
Underneath the noisy terror a stealthy hum creeps up like bubbling volcanic
  mud, a mixture of sinister whispers, rumours and slanders, and hisses of
  derision.
The men gathered there are vague like torn pages of an epic.
Groping in groups or single, their torchlight tattoos their faces in chequered
  lines, in patterns of frightfulness.
The maniacs suddenly strike their neighbours on suspicion and a hubbub of
  an indiscriminate fight bursts forth echoing from hill to hill.
The women weep and wail, they cry that their children are lost in a
  wilderness of contrary paths with confusion at the end.
Others defiantly ribald shake with raucous laughter their lascivious limbs
  unshrinkingly loud, for they think that nothing matters.

2
There on the crest of the hill stands the Man of faith amid the snow-white
  silence, He scans the sky for some signal of light, and when the clouds
  thicken and the night birds scream as they fly he cries, ‘Brothers, despair
  not, for Man is great.’
But they never heed him, for they believe that the elemental brute is eternal
  and goodness in its depth is darkly cunning in deception.
When beaten and wounded they cry, ‘Brother, where art thou?’
The answer comes, ‘I am by your side.’
But they cannot see in the dark and they argue that the voice is of their own
  desperate desire, that men are ever condemned to fight for phantoms in an
  interminable desert of mutual menace.

3
The clouds part, the morning star appears in the East, a breath of relief
  springs up from the heart of the earth, the murmur of leaves ripples along
  the forest path, and the early bird sings.
‘The time has come,’ proclaims the Man of faith.
‘The time for what?’
‘For the pilgrimage.’
They sit and think, they know not the meaning, and yet they seem to
  understand according to their desires.
The touch of the dawn goes deep into the soil and life shivers along through
  the roots of all things.
‘To the pilgrimage of fulfilment,’ a small voice whispers, nobody knows
  whence.
Taken up by the crowd it swells into a mighty meaning.
Men raise their heads and look up, women lift their arms in reverence,
  children clap their hands and laugh.
The early glow of the sun shines like a golden garland on the forehead of the
  Man of faith, and they all cry: ‘Brother, we salute thee!’

4
Men begin to gather from all quarters, from across the, seas, the mountains
  and pathless wastes, They come from the valley of the Nile and the banks of
  the Ganges, from the snow-sunk uplands of Thibet, from high-walled cities
  of glittering towers, from the dense dark—tangle of savage wilderness.
Some walk, some ride on camels, horses and elephants, on chariots with
  banners vieing with the clouds of dawn, The priests of all creeds burn
  incense, chanting verses as they go.
The monarchs march at the head of their armies, lances flashing in the sun
  and drums beating loud.
Ragged beggars and courtiers pompously decorated, agile young scholars
  and teachers burdened with learned age jostle each other in the crowd.
Women come chatting and laughing, mothers, maidens and brides, with
  offerings of flowers and fruit, sandal paste and scented water.
Mingled with them is the harlot, shrill of voice and loud in tint and tinsel.
The gossip is there who secretly poisons the well of human sympathy and
  chuckles.
The maimed and the cripple join the throng with the blind and the sick, the
  dissolute, the thief and the man who makes a trade of his God for   profit and
  mimics the saint.
‘The fulfilment!’
They dare not talk aloud, but in their minds they magnify their own greed,
  and dream of boundless power, of unlimited impunity for pilfering and
  plunder, and eternity of feast for their unclean gluttonous flesh.

5
The man of faith moves on along pitiless paths strewn with flints over
  scorching sands and steep mountainous tracks.
They follow him, the strong and the weak, the aged and young, the rulers of
  realms, the tillers of the soil.
Some grow weary and footsore, some angry and suspicious.
They ask at every dragging step, ‘How much further is the end?’
The Man of faith sings in answer; they scowl and shake their fists and yet
  they cannot resist him; the pressure of the moving mass and indefinite hope
  push them forward.
They shorten their sleep and curtail their rest, they out-vie each other in their
  speed, they are ever afraid lest they may be too late for their chance while
  others be more fortunate.
The days pass, the ever-receding horizon tempts them with renewed lure of
  the unseen till they are sick.
Their faces harden, their curses grow louder and louder.

6
It is night.
The travellers spread their mats on the ground under the banyan tree.
A gust of wind blows out the lamp and the darkness deepens like a sleep into
  a swoon.
Someone from the crowd suddenly stands up and pointing to the leader with
  merciless finger breaks out: ‘False prophet, thou hast deceived us!’
Others take up the cry one by one, women hiss their hatred and men growl.
At last one bolder than others suddenly deals him a blow.
They cannot see his face, but fall upon him in a fury of destruction and hit
  him till he lies prone upon the ground his life extinct.
The night is still, the sound of the distant waterfall comes muffled and a faint
  breath of jasmine floats in the air.

7
The pilgrims are afraid.
The woman begins to cry, the men in an agony of wretchedness shout at them
  to stop.
Dogs break out barking and are cruelly whipped into silence broken by
  moans.
The night seems endless and men and women begin to wrangle as to who
  among them was to blame.
They shriek and shout and as they are ready to unsheathe their knives the
  darkness pales, the morning light overflows the mountain tops.
Suddenly they become still and gasp for breath as they gaze at the figure
  lying dead.
The women sob out loud and men hide their faces in their hands.
A few try to slink away unnoticed, but their crime keeps them chained to their
  victim.
They ask each other in bewilderment, ‘Who will show us the path?’
The old man from the East bends his head and says: ‘The Victim.’
They sit still and silent.
Again speaks the old man, ‘We refused him in doubt, we killed him in anger,
  now we shall accept him in love, for in his death he lives in the life of us all,
  the great Victim.’
And they all stand up and mingle their voices and sing, ‘Victory to the
  Victim.’

8
‘To the pilgrimage’ calls the young, ‘to love, to power, to knowledge, to
  wealth overflowing,’
‘We shall conquer the world and the world beyond this,’ they all cry exultant
  in a thundering cataract of voices, The meaning is not the same to them all,
  but only the impulse, the moving confluence of wills that recks not death
  and disaster.
No longer they ask for their way, no more doubts are there to burden their
  minds or weariness to clog their feet.
The spirit of the Leader is within them and ever beyond them the Leader who
  has crossed death and all limits.
They travel over the fields where the seeds are sown, by the granary where
  the harvest is gathered, and across the barren soil where famine dwells and
  skeletons cry for the return of their flesh.
They pass through populous cities humming with life, through dumb
  desolation bugging its ruined past, and hovels for the unclad and unclean, a
  mockery of home for the homeless.
They travel through long hours of the summer day, and as the light wanes in
  the evening they ask the man who reads the sky: ‘Brother, is yonder the
  tower of our final hope and peace?’
The wise man shakes his head and says: It is the last vanishing cloud of the
  sunset.’
‘Friends,’ exhorts the young, ‘do not stop.
Through the night’s blindness we must struggle into the Kingdom of living
  light.’
They go on in the dark.
The road seems to know its own meaning and dust underfoot dumbly speaks
  of direction.
The stars celestial way farers sing in silent chorus: ‘Move on, comrades!’
In the air floats the voice of the Leader: ‘The goal is nigh.’

9
The first flush of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping leaves of the forest.
The man who reads the sky cries: ‘Friends, we have come!’
They stop and look around.
On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon, the glad golden
  answer of the earth to the morning light.
The current of daily life moves slowly between the village near the hill and
  the one by the river bank.
The potter’s wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings fuel to the market, the
  cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture, and the woman with the pitcher on
  her head walks to the well.
But where is the King’s castle, the mine of gold, the secret book of magic, the
  sage who knows love’s utter wisdom?
‘The stars cannot be wrong,’ assures the reader of the sky.
‘Their signal points to that spot.’
And reverently he walks to a wayside spring from which wells up a stream of
  water, a liquid light, like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and
  laughter.
Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf—thatched
  hut, at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and sings: ‘Mother,
  open the gate!’

10
A ray of morning sun strikes aslant at the door.
The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primaeval chant of creation:
  ‘Mother, open the gate!
The gate opens.
The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap, Like the dawn
  with the morning star.
The sun’s ray that was waiting at the door outside falls on the head of the
  child.
The poet strikes his lute and sings out: ‘Victory to Man, the new-born, the
  ever-living.’
They kneel down, the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise
  and the fool, and cry: ‘Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.’
The old man from the East murmurs to himself: ‘I have seen!’