Theophany

...I remember the flaming blossoms of the ocatillo, set at the end of their long sterns, upright upon the mesa, like great groups of candles...

...And the gargoyle shapes of giant cacti, the sweet fragrant hissing of bacon in the frying pan at night and morning—and, above all, I remember the rising of the sun one morning, the memory unique among all others...

...We shall be gone a week, or ten days maybe, just as the chances of travel shall determine the matter...

...But I do remember other things...

...Across fifty miles of mesa lying below mc like a black sea rose high mamatairas in the cast, above which the sky became clearer and dearer, and cvcn as I watched the sun was lifted up, a pale, cicar, tremendous globe rayed with a golden glory...

...But indeed it is the same difficulty, only accentuated, that he who writes meets whenever he tries to use the pen unless, to be sure, he is a great writer indeed...

...the heart drinks it like immaterial wine...

...I kept no notes, and so it is that when now I try to relate the memories of that desert journey I find myself, as often before, trying to deal with a memory of something that in truth cannot be remembered...

...I remember the dust devils scouring the arid plain with whirling rage...

...Such were the cvcnts...

...I'm bored—oho...

...Many years later, however, when (and again upon my knees) I saw another shining glory encircling a globe, a globe of ineff able whiteness—the Sacred Host uplifted in a monstrance—L at least partly understood why I fell upon my knees upon that Arizona mountain top, and why this tiny circle—whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere—was more awful and more mighty than the sun...

...We shall ride across the mesa to yonder range of mountains, crossing them to the farther side, and thence returning to this place by another trail...

...I remember the mirage of a palmbordered body of water that appeared in the midst of the dusty desert, possibly the far refraction from those palms that grow on the shores of the Gulf of California...

...I remember the honey-colored flame of camp fires, under the vault of a sky gigantically lofty, and pellucidly brilliant, through the keen dear air with marvelous stan...

...We shall see no cities or towns, scarcely even a ranch house, and we shall make our camps where the end of the day shall find us...

...Bishops, princes, warriors tall And ladies frail or true, Were in the lofty banquet ball, And deadly terror seized them all To heir the King blaspheme...

...All I can say now is that it secined to be the only right attitude in which to view that spectacle...

...The littic wind that comes before the dawn had not yet begun to stir...

...They go one better—all alone, Each nsa god on his lofty throne Making the world in his image—but The door of the thunder bolt is sbu4 And the winds of heaven sigh, "Tuti Tut...

...The silence was—thc silence made mc think of—silence...

...Concerning the exterior events of the particular memory that I am trying to recover, I can be fairly explicit...

...But at this point language fails...

...How is one to net with cold written words the delicate images that haunt the inner places of the mind...

...that I was as one exalted in spirit on that mountain top, and that for a little space I hcard in the cry of a hidden bird a language that my soul understood but could not translate for my mind to grasp...

...Unlike many of his fellows, he could companion with others than his own sort—a great advantage, and a rare one, not only to scientists but to writers as well...

...I have told you what happened: what I saw, and what I heard...

...That is the exterior of the memory...

...It was the voice of a bird...

...Later on that day I asked one of the scientists the name of the bird, and I was told the name bestowed upon it by science (which in time, no doubt, will duly catalogue all thinks under the sun) but that name I have also forgotten...

...One memory—yes...

...Let me try to explain...

...gotten which, not having been sufficiently impressed by the circumstance, which I learned too late in life to apply to my own case...

...T.C...

...But I was not careful...

...Indeed, I am afraid that all the things I was told about the cacti and the ocatillo and the sagubrush and theguayule (from which rubber in a paying quantity may sometime b~' extracted) have remained only very dimly in my memory—except that one practical fact about the guayule plant, which I suppose must have been repeated many times until at last it stuck, or perhaps I had somF vague notion of going into the rubber extracting business, as other men have dreamed of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...

...Gratefully I said yes, and went forth upon the trail with that man and his companions...

...But God did not consult mc, so, Tim world its dull drab way must go...

...THEOPHANY By MICHAEL WILLIAMS THERE is a city in the desert country of the southwest, lying among mountain ranges, on a great empty plain thousands of feet above the sea...

...You may, if you wish, learn something about our work, which is to visit the stations we have established in the wilderness, where we gather facts concerning desert vegetation on mountain and plain, which facts will in time be duly classified, written down, and properly indexed, all to the greater glory of science...

...But little high-brows—-bellows-blown, Now sit on stools, and think, And dip worn pens in ntery ink, And from the King's boast do not shrink...

...But I cannot tell you what really matters (to mc at least) in striving to recall my memory...

...With an acceding caution—why I should be so careful II did not know—I only felt that I must—I stole away from that camp, from my sleepIng companions, and softly, even stealthily, crept up a steep slope that ended in a ledge of rock from which I knew I could look down over and above the mighty plain below...

...Oho...

...All of them (with the exception of the Chinese cook and the mule drivers) were learned in science (but the cook and the muleteers were learned in life) and they were most zealous in the pursuit of the ideals and the duties of their mystery, for which employment of their talents and their time they had been set aside and bountifully supplied with all necessary things by a Scotchman who had himself followed the iron mongery business with such thrift that he had saved from the earnings of his trade (or so I am told) the tidy sum of two hundred million dollars, or maybe pounds sterling—I have for...

...As I moved, step by stcp, suddenly I wag stricken still by a voice—a very tiny, a very soft, sweet, most pure little voice, scarcely audible, yet distinct as the last tone of a silver bell vibrating on the very edge of silence...

...They do not lift their pride so high, They play at golf and dumbly die, Invite no strokes of an angry sky, Content if left to reign...

...If I had but been what I am not (the trouble that afflicts all children of Adam) and had been careful of the future while living in the present, I might have kept a note book on that desert journey, and set down in due order all the happenings, and the things that I saw, and was told, and then I would have had all the facts comprising an interesting narrative, and much presumably useful information couching upon botany and science in general...

...I remember a sunset that was seen through the arches of a triple rainbow, with a storm of lightning visible at the end of the vista like strange hieroglyphics on a purple curtain...

...TAe Thunderers It was a King of Spain who said: "Had God consulted me, The world would bc a charming place, And men would be a braver race, And women, much more fair of face, And in their hearts more free.— And inucb more kind to me...

...They built the Alcazar again— But kings are humbler now...

...He was right, for what the bird voice said (I did not see the tiny thing) in that silence under the stars, just as dawn began, was (very soft, very sweet, most pure) and thrice repeated "Jesu Maria, Jcsu Maria, Jcsu Maria...

...The sky, though paling, was incredibly thick with stars brilliant beyond the experience of all save those who have climbed high in the arid regions where thc air becomes like the spirit of air, purged of all impurides...

...For alas, [cannot ren'zcrnbcr, ~tiII Icus express, the soul of my memory—I only know that its soul aeemcd manifest then, but that now the veils have dropped again I can only say (but how can you understand...

...It was such dread as in a dream Opens the door of bell— When sudden, o'er the Alcazar, A swooping storm wiped out each star And swift there came the inshing jar Of thunder, and the lightning fell And slew the King cf Spain...

...and just the singleness and the uniqueness of that memory is the great difficulty, now that I come to write about it...

...Never before had I heard that voice...

...As follows— One morning, high up, almost near the main ridge of the Catalinas, I suddenly w4ened jr9m~ deep d~j~'lhrij' l~foti my comparuons...

...Wandering through that country, at times riding the Mexican border with immigration officers, or upon the ranges with cattle men, seeking subjects about which to write, but seeking adventure more assiduously, it was my fortune to meet in this city a man who was a scientist...

...never since then have I hcard it...

...We were in it clearing in a dark wood, a wood of the high mountains, squat, stiff cedars, wInd-blown and fantastic, like things carved out of bronze, and a few thin tall pines...

...Nor is that the only fact concerning the patron of the expedition, and concerning these scientists and their expedition across the mesas and through the mountains, which I have forgotten...

...But I asked a man who lived in that country, a man in whose veins there was Indian blood and the blood of thc Spanish who were the first white men to cr~ter Arizona, and he told me that I had beard the Jcsu Maria bird...

...When the voice had ccascd, greatly wandering, and awed as it is strange that one should be awed by something so little and so sweet, I reached the ledge of rock, cresting a slope that was almost a precipice, falling away after the first steep pitch in a more gradual descent of thousands of feet...

...This man said to me— - "I am about to leave this city on an expedition, with horses and mule teams bearing blankets and food, and I invite you to go with us...

...nor can I tell you why, when the globe of the sun appeared, ringed in a glory of living gold, 1 fell upon my knees...

...But whether you learn little or much, I promise you a glorious ride...

...Wrapped in November a6, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL 73 blankets, lying on the ground around the smoldering embers of a camp fire, they were motionless like logs or stones in the dusk...

...That is the memory...