| They came by the courtyard, and it was a small enough town that a stranger was known as such, and though she did not look unfamiliar to any open eye, the people also knew she had not been standing among them on the night before, and so they saw her as a stranger, and what they saw a stranger as, was as someone who might teach them a new song... She would not disappoint them in that expectation, but neither would she be bound by it, and so she and he came into the circle of the lamplight, for the sunlight was only still high on the clouds above, and a silence came with them, and she spoke out into it: 'This is a beautiful place,' she said, 'and I know it is hard to get here sometimes, to get to where you are together and with joy, but it is worth everything you have. 'Together is your home in this world, and this world is your home.' 'I am visiting, and my love had the chance to take me to only a very few places on this day.' 'He took me to the fields, where he finds work, and where this town finds its sustenance. And though he did not speak of it, I saw in my love the memory of hunger, and I see it in some of you now, But I did not see in the fields any recent memory of drought, or of blight either...' 'Now, I am a stranger here, but it seems to me that if the rain is so good as to fall from the sky, and the earth is so good as to nourish your seeds, and the sun is so good, by your lights, as to shine on your crops, and your crops grow well, then there cannot be hunger here, not in such a season.' 'Some of you are hungry today, and some of you will be hungry tomorrow, and you tell yourselves this is the way of the world?' 'Yes, it is, if the rain won't fall, and this is the hard truth, but what will the truth of your own intentions be?' 'You know there is never to be hunger in the midst of plenty, and you know that while there is shelter to be had, none may go without, you know it is wrong, and it must be made right.' 'And, know this, however else you manage it, it will not be made right, until your concern and your respect, each for each other, is made deep and made manifest by the way you live your lives.' And then she said, 'I know when you see a stranger, you hope for a new song.' 'I think you have all the songs you need, and have only to believe in the better parts of them, but another song cannot hurt, can it?' 'So, may you find the love in this one, and may you know its purpose, and may it be good to you, and a fit vessel for your souls as they sing...' When the night is high and rising and the stars fall from the sky we gather in the valley pass time and time gone by In one and one another in shadows and in dreams we gather in the lifting of oceans far from streams And we dance til we are falling and stand til we are free and listen when we're knowing and look that we may see And for every road we travel and in every song we sing the night to day is turning as winter into spring When the night is high and rising and the stars fall from the sky we gather in the valley past time and time gone by... Now the song being the way it was, and the night being the way it was, he had closed his eyes while she was singing, and in fact they all had. And when the song was over, and he looked up, she was gone... and his heart stopped beating... and he looked out over the courtyard... at all the eyes shining in the lamplight... and he heard the music, still in the air... and his heart started beating again... And he said, 'She is gone like she has always been gone, and she is here like she has always been here...' And she is gone like she has always been gone, and she is here like she has always been here... |