Now, understanding that history means so much to us with its names and dates, and the way in which those things serve to make such history relatable, real — allow the Record a moment in which to record its ecstatic detachment, in which to renew its promise to serve the relations of future generations, future degenerations, with an unburdened account of the following…who could believe. Apparently, the rumors are true, that the gossip of the great has once again proved to be verity — the lashon for once having harangued the right mensch. Him, he’s the Pope, or once was, Pius Zeppelini da Foist, I’d recognize him anywhere, even like this: having exchanged almost everything of his save the yarmulke down to his now naked feet, robes for robes, his formerly supreme eccleisiatical power traded in for a powerlessness even greater, that of the nobody, the nothing ascetic, as if a king undercover, gone slumming, among: he has to live, goy’s got to eat, bird’s got to fly’s what they say, so I’ve heard — and so he’s converted, become as a schnorrer remade, Propheting Elijahstyled; I slacken my pace, hope my face won’t betray me. His riches ragged in three threats flat, he goes town-to-town, making the updated beatitudinal circuit urbi et orbi, his lapsed holiness bestowing blessings upon any head, in exchange for alms, psalms, straw, hay, mashke, noshke, and prutahs, anything else you might give how he’ll take; the once Holy Father and believe it, I can’t, behold it with your own allseeing thirdeye — he’s the nihilmensch secondcometh, thirdhanded bearing news of anything he can remember, invent on the wing, on the fly. Dethroned, how he couldn’t sit still anymore, began to walk, abandoning the pretense to any Dietrologia, it’s what you give that’s what he gets, and so one Shalom to the Vatican and another Shalom to the road; how he’s become likable, almost too, understandable, makes you think, makes you feel, real salt of the earth this mensch just wandering the earthly See, globetrodding Messiahways, the humblest thing you’ll ever stumble across, I have, it’s slowing me down, tripping me up — not even rocks can compare, not even thorns can compete — for leagues, for parasangs of stones silenced in any way of ice, of mud, body, and bone. My son, I’a thank you…goes his spiel: works most of the time, so it’s been said by lesser — may you be blessed with’a many masculine kinder…
Into a village, a town, any of which, his accomplice the stork leads him by a leash rendered from pallia. Once out of town again (and it’s so hard to know when you’re out given all the ruination, these days), Pinchas, that’s what he wants you to call him, Phinehas if you must, he again leads the stork, holds a crosiered stick to help image his pace, just a wither splintered from the crook of a bishop found dead, in his other hand the ecclesiastical sash tied tightly around the gullet of the stork soaring above him — tugged this way, then yadda. As a schnorrer, nu, nothing’s too good for him: when he can, he’ll demand the best, and when he can’t, he’ll kvetch there’s no better; his dream: to merit upon the strength of his soulwork alone maintainence by charity unto the custom of his lifestyle former. Of course, without that naggy I’m here for you shtick — just got in the way, cramped his kneel.
Why shouldn’t I live like’a dat? he’s always asking the molting, weatherworn stork, who’ll never answer him if they want to keep up the act, the showy front that’s keeping them both fed and warm.
Da highlife, don’t I deserve it?
Hymn, a goy’s got to dream — have patience, have hope: the last two coins begged from the eyes of a cardinal beggar, asleep by the side of a road: he’s taken his wine, too, a shard flint.
Denied Jerusalem’s asylum by the Abulafias, begrudged immunity in the Shade, condemned to vagabond on, how he attempts to schnorr all the spoils, all the trapping pelts of the Papacy — but without that pesky Title, without that puny responsibility rub that was both miraculous and, admit it, a bitch. A pain in the prostrate. Frontmensching with his pet stork, this savvy bird with, you’ll excuse me, just a bit of an ego, a bite or peck of a complex, though his only friend he’ll say as if right on cue, his best, how he loves it like the son it’d never deigned to deliver him (though offhours, he argues against its silent grudge, threatens clipping wings, cementing its feet — once again raising the topic of tricks, just a handful, wouldn’t hurt, a little tightrope, juggling herrings, all while riding a tricycle); together, they slum plotz to platz, vagadicht raggy from court to empty of belly, shack shedding its lean to strawpallet, strippeddown to plank to nail at his sandals whether stolen or lost, and so with feet bared to thorn the road again, bloody: following the muds, wherever they take him, you know, he goes with the floes, I’m impressed, God, we all are.
It’s begun snowing again, and the stork flies over him, to keep the freeze from his holy.
