There’s an Ocean around Land, there’re lands around a Land, there’s land around a village, there’re villages around land, there’s land around towns, there’re towns around villages, there’re villages around hills, there’re hills around a wall, there’re walls around a city…this is cosmology, davka from dechn: the ether to the Leviathan, to the water to the rock to the angel to the earth; this is the ringing of the rings, the inlaying of the spheres, the way a city circles out like the trunk of a tree, annularly, the annual dendrochronologic decored to decode — and then inside, toward the Square, toward the middle of the Square, the meridian Mittel, a descent down its steps of an immaculate blackness, flanked by two columns recounting two histories both correct though conflicting…there they are, through the winding streets winding around then amid the limitless beauty of ruin, each street perfect in its distress, distressing, a creation impossible for a limited God — down the old Royal Way, the ancient coronation route from the Church in the Square up to the Castle above and there, upon the mountain, the hill, the burialmound, the pagan cinders still smolder, the ancient beheading route from Castle back down to Square one with its Church, at which we crown a new king, again, the son of the dead with whom all of this is now enacted again, reenacted, princely as proper; and we all say, There they are, through the narrowing alleys, the fallen and the narrowed, felled to sewers, drainage ditch, guttering runnel, cleaned now made sparkling bright and doneup in periwinkle, sunshine yellow #3, it might be…over the old masonry, the inlaid memory, cobbled crosses ringing the plinths, past the statues under tarps, too, and their horses in bronze and in coppery marble, through the smaller antecedent squares, kleiner rings, the squared circles squared, these triangulations of the Baroque condemned to fresh life and then, circled, past the tortuous birdcage, rococo’s ornate, in which the king would’ve kept those who’d blaspheme his queen or the princess the same, there past the souvenirshops and the stands, the huddled, huddling, stores, with their windows wellstocked, an inclusive assortment of creditcard decals prominently displayed — there they are, toward the Square, again and again all roads lead to the Square, roamcircling it, triangulating it with wander, inescapable once there and then…
And we all say, There they are…alternately, hineni; to the center of the Square, to the infinite Square without center and there circling the square within, there they are — facing now the Astronomical Clock, which is the face of the Town Hall, bureaucratically blank, unremitting; Church spires and steeple shadow them, shade between the legs, as third arms — the infinite hands of infinite clocks clocking what time they have left, the too many faces, with too many names…the entire Square rendered a clock of clocks, a confusion — all of them timing each other; many standing and sitting and lounging a lean atop and against the statuary at the base of the Clock, until a municipal livestock inspector, maybe, a hiredhand, like everyone else here who has words and his orders, comes around and yells at them to move on in a tongue forever unknown.
There they are, by the Clock cuckooing every hour on the hour — the Church’s bells on a timer, too, to ring mechanically, every fifteen minutes, the quarters, four times, not much time, not much life.
Nothing left.
The Church itself a bell rung by the clapper of its cross.
There they are. Just one crack, all it takes, one crack more, more like the merest chip in a sett or a cobble, broken — the first imperfection not party to the Land’s ruin perfected, perfecting — and it all falls apart. Goes to pieces. Exposed.
In anticipation of their impending Tour, they adjust their glasses, which have been mandated, and straighten their uniforms, tuck their shirts into khaki slacks, skirts, zip up fleecejackets, and down; walkingshoes comfortable, check, cinch the belt, camera apparatus, no film, not allowed.
What else? The rules…
They await.
