The Messenger

The messenger runs, not carrying the news of victory, or defeat; the messenger, unresting, has always been running, the wind before and behind him, across the turning back of earth, leaving his tracks across the plains, his ropes hanging from the ledges of mountains; for centuries, millennia, he has been running carrying whatever it is that cannot be put down: it is rolled in a tube made of hide, carefully, to keep it dry as he runs, through storms and monsoons, sometimes on foot, sometimes poling a boat through a flooded mangrove swamp, or setting stiff sails to cross from island to island running before the wind. In some ages, peasants have helped him—bringing him small cakes of rice wrapped in the weeds of the sea and new sandals woven of hemp for his torn bleeding feet; sometimes in the heat of noon they would offer a drink of rosewater, sometimes a coat of fur against the winter snows; and sometimes at night, he would rest by a fire where voices wove with the music of gut-strings, or with mountain pipes whose sound was like wind through the bones of creation—and he would be cheered by the company of others, the firelit glow of their faces like a bright raft afloat in the dark; at times, rumors spread of his death, scholars analyzed his obsession, dated his bones, his prayer bundle; but at dawn, he always arose, in the mists, in the blur of so many mornings, so many shoes worn into scraps and discarded, so many the cities that burned as he passed them, so many the skulls abandoned by armies, so many whose blood stained the threads of their prayer rugs, so many, so many, so many— oh, and that green, sunlit hill that kept rising from the dark waters of flood, outlined bright against the sky, the odds, the evidence— and he, the messenger, running through history, carries this small tube, its durable hide—carries it, not like a torch, no, nothing so blazing; not like the brass lamp that summons a genie, no magic wishes; not like the candles that hope sets aflame and a breath can extinguish ... no. He carried it like what has no likeness, what is curled up inside and he swore he could feel it, though perhaps he had dreamed it, still at times, stopping under some tree or other, when the night was warm, so close the stars seemed to breathe in the branches, he would lie quiet, then it would seem that whatever it was in there would pulse softly with light, a code only the heart could break (but of course he couldn’t say for he was only the messenger)— and at sunrise, wearily, he would rise to his feet and trudge on, sometimes running, sometimes stumbling, carrying whatever it was that could not be put down, would not be cast aside— and besides, he would chide himself, weren’t they all as tired as he, and hadn’t they helped him, time and again, on his way?