“Come look at this.”
The voice came from somewhere
south to where I was, viewing a people of the East establish a “Republic.” They
seemed happy enough. I used the thermals and upheaving winds filling my wings;
the muscles in my back contracted and relaxed fluently, like a wave. The voice was
Uriel, crouched among the cloud, his wings folded and his knees bunched. He gestured
me closer, caressing the thick cloud aside, heavy with ice.
Down beneath
in the green world, four men stood solemn at a flag in a mound of snow. I’d
never seen men on this part yet. I itched to leave, I could see out the corner
of my eye some sort of horseless-chariot race commencing on a farther
continent, smoke like the velvet of night bulging and pulsing out, with cities
rising and men falling; sinning. I liked cities.
The man had made promises and broken
them; he promised to leave the lick of the sea aside and become a doctor, but
his mother was long dead, and the promise with it.
Inspired by men breaking themselves
to see what man has never seen, the greed to be first, out of an entire
species, to claim for a nation what is rightfully theirs.
A boat froze in Canadian ice, but
his country’s King rose from Swedish grasp. Cold numb fingers wrote a letter of
praise, the paper invisible when held near snow; the man felt blind. Puffy eyed
people thick in fur taught him how to survive amongst the ice; how to live
where life was unliveable.
He stared at the flag erect atop the
tent; the South Pole. He looked at the sky. The bed of cold had been pierced by
the heart of man. He smiled.
“Just look.
Look at them! They think they’ve discovered
it! You tell me when that was not there!” I could not; often on my travels the
great ice sheet would unroll beneath me, and my eyes would be entranced by the
individual glistening of ice, yet the whole tumbling tundra; the pure.
The flag fluttered. The men
seemed happy enough. Why did it matter? There were dogs too. I supposed I liked
dogs. Too obedient, though. The men seemed as cold and motor-like as the
eternal winter around them; they were organised and purposeful. Why should I be interested in this spread of
ice and cold, no matter how beautiful, with its bare handful of men, some dogs,
and topless amounts of god forsaken penguins?
“Don’t you
understand? To them, it was like it was never there. Now it is. Where isn’t
there man, Metatron?” I turned to glance over the world doubtfully; there was
place for all creatures. I left Uriel with a smirk, and returned slightly shocked.
There were
men that seemed happy, but oh so much pain. Russia reeled in a whirlpool of
political agony; cigars blazed in industrial jaws; on just a small island, a
speck, a small war was waged for the freedom of black people on Cuba and was
snuffed, people dragged out of homes, beaten, and shot. A great vessel doubts
natures cold grasp and is pulled to a drowning hell. The horror of the
cavernous canyon between being happy and seeming happy becomes a true death
drop; where was the unity of Sandalphon’s arms, the reality of Samael’s sword,
the severity within Camael’s sharp punishing? Michael would weep at the
onslaught on nature, and Israfil will wait, cleaning and tuning his glorious instrument,
waiting to sound it when judgement is to come to hand.
“We’re
nought as angels, now, Metatron. Put your pen down.” I closed the book; the
last event recorded four men looking at a flag, the year inked atop each page
for this volume; 1912. I wondered who would read it now.
Uriel and I watched the cold
continent be discovered, by a species that would ravish and forget. Breed and
destroy. Some time passed before a bedraggled group arrived, and fell to their
knees before the flag. They were exhausted, cold, and too human for this place;
they surely would not survive. They had been humiliatingly beaten.
Uriel and I laughed.
Inspired by the discovery of Antarctica by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, on the 14th
December 1911, during his South Pole expedition 1910-1912, just 33-34 days
before the Briton Robert F. Scott’s group arrived.
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