The Friends In Three Scenes

for Baharak There is an immense wall between us. We can hear far above the roar of the King's chariots racing four abreast on the top. The King presents the winner, who displayed the most daring, to his court and gives him a lovely golden chalice inscribed with the imperial seal. (Next week his subalterns will place memorial wreaths on the graves of the losers.) ... We cannot see each other, no voice can penetrate the alien stone. But let us walk along the wall until we sense each other's presence like a welcome dream figure. Then we will stop and face the wall. Touching its hard, ragged surface will be like holding air, soft, pliant, transparent air in our hands. That sensation is to touch what friendship is to the soul. We seek no imperial favor, we do not feel the allure of gold or silver. Friendship is our lasting joy. Meet me there where we are one in the silence of the wall. There is a broad river, one of the aged brown gods, that churns, and sweeps, and floods the dry landscape west of the city. We walk on either side of it despite its force and deafening noise. Sometimes I will playfully speed up, begin to run, and you will laughing chase me. Other times we stand still, each one only a blob of color to the other on the other bank. We wave our arms in a kind of sign language, each smiling at the other's ingenuity. And, I admit, sometimes tears well up in my eyes, because your figure is so bright, trapped in a shaft of purest sunlight. Travelers, whose business or pleasure takes them far from our capital city, speak of a garden on the far side of the dusty hills of the high country of the North. They say the colors shimmer even from a distance, but explode in wonder when you draw near. They say red flowers, blue flowers, white flowers cluster in their blazing glory in fields stretching to the horizon. They say flowering trees with huge green leaves sheltering delicate yellow interiors line the banks of rushing silver streams. Then they tire of talking, and leave us anxious for their next visit. And I wonder, if both us lie in separate sleep, clear our minds of trivial things and picture those flowers that festoon the earth, might we not dream that garden in our separate sleep into one lucid dream of a common place where we stand side by side....