"Will you tell us that story again, grandfather - the one about the Night?" the children asked with the moon in their eyes. And the old man looked at the stars around him and smiled at the children with his grey teeth.
He said, "the Night Adventure happened, unlike the other adventures, in a town that lives no more. No one alive now knows of it except me. Of course, the Nature God used to know it too, but he has a short memory and must have forgotten. Do not ever ask him about it."
The child nodded earnestly. "But what happened, grandfather, on that night?"
The old man drank some water from the jar and cleared his throat. "Listen," he said,
"The night would not speak the words.
So the cobweb held itself
lightly
Against the wind and the moths
Sat silently near the fires.
In the town with the lakes
A deep and tranquil slumber
Had fallen upon the sheets and
The men with the tinted swords.
The night would not speak the words.
Even when it rose quietly,
the wind.
The one that did not howl or blow
But drifted and picked up dust
Along the miles of the outer town
Picked up cloths left by women
Ashes from men's pipes and
Papers strewn by children.
The night would not speak the words.
Not even the wind grew
to a mountain
Of dust or a swirling cloud of grey
And advanced slowly on a sleeping town
The guard awoke from his dreams
Of war and saw a new enemy before him
A formless monster as high as the sky
As wide as the city of his childhood.
The night would not speak the words.
Not when the sentry fled
in fear
With the cloud patiently following.
He ran towards the house of shadows
Where the chieftan lay in sleep.
The horses saw him running and
Looked their eyes away from him.
The lizards stopped in their tracks to watch.
The night would not speak the words.
But many of them knew
the time had come.
The spider in the cobweb knew it first
He could hear the whispers of the night
In the corners where it hid it's voice.
And the moths knew from the crackling
Spiteful fire where night hid its secrets.
The horses heard and the lizards were told.
But the night would not speak the words.
The sentry awoke the
chieftan and the folk
They stared in dismay and dark fear
Lights went up in flares and women
Ran out looking back as the dust
Slid over the town walls and towers
The people ran all swift and alarmed
Leaving their homes to the dust.
The night would never speak the words.
And in the morning the
men returned
To the town they had known so long
The horses still were standing,
The lizards and the moths lay asleep
Near where the spider had hung its cobwebs.
But there was no town and no houses.
The night had gone with its unspoken words.
The walls had crumbled
with the storm
There were no cloths, ashes or papers
That the wind had carried so fiercely
No rubble, no stones, no trees and... no lakes.
The lakes had disappeared, they had
Taken the dust and the scraps and slipped
Under the sand, the boundless brown sand.
The night had gone with
its unspoken words.
And the day watched in blinding bewilderment the desert that the night had
made."
