Hawa

The wandering storytellers have brought a tale of her: that those who praise her gather their words from the freshness of her face; that she is the one in whom radiant Love itself is made to shine; that Time is but the gliding ball beneath her polo mallet.
When anger enters her, the steps of Time grow slow.
But when a smile, sweet with gratitude, parts her lips like a pomegranate opening into bloom, Time falls into such ecstasy that it carries the world across itself like a swift and restless horse.
And whoever tells this tale shall become drunk upon the imagining of her face.
In a grove of trees, where wild beasts and herds of deer, the murmur of birds, and the breath of the living world moved endlessly through one another, she was the pillar of a little hut.
At dawn, when the Radiance of the World first lifted its head above the horizon, a mournful reed-song would arise at the doorway of her hut, as though delicate fingers were drawing away the chains of her captivity.
Her footsteps breathed freshness into the yellow leaves, and the beasts of the forest, spellbound, would fall into the spring of her gaze.
And whenever her lips stirred with the softness of her voice, the birds and sparrows became her companions in song; drunken upon their own harmony, they would descend, almost senseless, upon the earth.
The wandering storytellers called her Hawa.
And those who knew the hidden meanings of things, astonished by the secret meaning contained within her name, would be overtaken by states of wonder that seemed themselves to bloom.

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The wandering storytellers—those who bring tales of decree and destiny, those who read the letter of Fate as it is written across the passing of days—are beside themselves with rapture whenever they speak of her.
For it is the radiance of her face that makes the wild horses of Poetry, maddened with delight, race through the horizons of imagination, through the worlds within and without.
Each dawn, when she steps into the grove, the harp and reed-flute of Life awaken the world, silently, to the dance.
And those who ask their questions out of childlike wonder become lost in the enchanted play of words, searching among them for a word that might reach her—and finding none.
Within the World-Beholding Chalice, a figure appeared.
The Radiant One of Love, the turner of the meaning of the heavens, was seized by the thought of gazing upon the horizons.
And when this thought clothed itself in the garment called Desire, her fingers and arms began to stir, lifting her like a creeping vine toward the treetops.
Her hand became a little canopy above her brow.

When the sun appeared in the East and found her eyes closed against its gaze, it drew a veil of shame from the clouds and covered its face.
Thus have the knowing ones interpreted the deed of the sun:
She—Hawa, who herself was the meaning of radiance—was such that the sun had not the strength to look upon her.

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A mournful melody.
The trees bowed their heads.
The streams fell still.
The sky wrapped itself in a garment of clouds.
The falling leaves were the signs by which the trees wept.
Exhausted beasts appeared within the World-Beholding Chalice.
And beneath a mighty tree, her body lay, silent and utterly still.
Herds of gazelles, beasts of the forest, birds, sparrows—all had but one task:
to behold her.
Her lips no longer opened with the bloom of a pomegranate.
Her eyes had drawn the curtain of their pupils across themselves.
And her hands and feet had no strength even for a lament.
Countless birds seized her garment with beak and claw, while a caravan of beasts became companions to their flight.
Those who have sought to translate the language of that caravan have spoken in the tongue of the grieving crow.
The birds struggled to carry her, opening and folding their wings in endless effort.
And when the doorway of her hut finally appeared before them, the deer themselves struggled to open it.
The door opened.
And the flying birds carried the Radiant One of Love, the turner of the meaning of the heavens, and laid her upon the bed.
It was as though tar had fallen into the World-Beholding Chalice.
Every image within it lost its colour.
Everything was swallowed by darkness.
A vast shadow appeared upon the threshold of the hut.
The sky had hidden its face beneath a veil of clouds, and Time had clothed the thought of death in the garment of Desire.
“Your being is a vessel for death.”
A whisper such as this twisted the shadow inward upon itself, like the winding branch of an ivy vine.
“One must drink in you the wine of death.
Your name is the heavy measure of death.”
His cry, torn from the deepest chamber of his grief, stirred the crows of the grove.
And without any delicate fingers coming to draw the chains from the doorway, the old wooden door itself, answering that grief-stricken cry, began to release a mournful song as it opened.
Like a firefly in the night, her face—lying utterly still upon the bed of repose—opened before the shadow the door of illumination.
The shadow began to burn.
And like a phoenix, born from the fire of its own being, a man emerged from the flames, newborn.
When his eyes opened from beneath the curtain of their pupils, he desired, like the moth, to burn himself in the lamp of her face.
He set his foot upon the threshold.
And without will—for in her presence, even free will has no leave to take a breath—his hand came to rest upon her foot.
There, within the realm of imagination, he began to traverse the Seven Cities of Love.
He brought his head forth from the darkness.
He washed himself in the spring of her being.
The image of his existence was cleansed of everything that was not her.
His tongue, seized by the desire to describe her, he held between his teeth.
He shook the dust of grief from his shoulders.
He took Death beneath the lash.
And the cup of his being filled once more with Life.
When he opened his eyes from the realm of imagination, he found her sitting upon the bed of repose.
His tongue fell silent in his mouth.
He could do nothing but gaze into the eyes of her.
And then a tumult of joy and rapture arose within the pupils of their eyes, and in their gazes, Reunion was received as a festival.