The Cities in the Seas (by Carla Soares)

 LO! See my throne upon this cliff. See how I sit and look down and look ahead and look

behind. See how tall this cliff is…

No. Liar. Start again.

[a shaft of light ignites the surface, fades. none breaks the waters. a long sigh stirs the air.]

This cliff was tall. A root of ancient rock, gnarled and broken, rising from the lurid depths of

the glassy sea, its beautiful massive bower unwieldy to the punishment of great waves. See

below, still, the pinnacles – the domes – the bowers…

Better. Is it a new story? Is it to have kings and queens, then?

No kings. Or all of them, the good and the bad and the worst and the best, all gone to rest…

Only the story of a cliff. And many cities of stone and mortar and brick and glass and life and

death. The cliff now little more than a swelling before which lay the heavy waters of the

present, deep and gray, a resigned mirror of melancholy skies, cities below each a shrine to

what once was.

No. I’ve heard that one, seen those kings and their beggars. Just start a new one.

It is the only one. A new one. And an old one. Babylon-old. Older than that. But also look

ahead, see where it leads? The end to what was once a beginning, a beginning to this end.

And my words are ancient, but they are new. They are eternal. They come at my pace, for I

am the one sitting in this throne, feet digging into the dust of the bones of men and the

sands of time eaten towers… towers built and consumed by men.

Not your words, those. None of them. One of yours wrote them once, a long time ago.

But it was only yesterday. The day before yesterday. And these words are mine, too, as they

were his, for all is mine that you can see, all is mine that you can hear. It ends, it starts. I

swallow, I spit. I destroy, I build. I am this cliff and this sea and what lies beneath it, the sky

above, the ground where I sprout and persist… the creature and its creation of stone and

metal and word. I am what sets in the west and I am…

Mr. Mighty? SuperAllThings?

[the irreverence of the young. impatience where stillness should reside. so a deep rumbling,

then a silence. a decade long quiet, more. slow angry pace. the waters still rolling, still

climbing, still eating up the cities of men, still devouring the dust in once sweet coasts –

devouring harbours and piers – devouring kitchens and bedrooms – devouring avenues and

supermarkets – devouring train stations and the wings of planes – devouring the halls of

kings and angels in domes of long gone pasts – devouring sky-scraping turrets of long gone

futures, eating away the memory of men, until all that’s left are the upmost pinnacles where

new wildness sprouts already. time moves as it stays still]

Mr. Mighty? Are you there? Have you left at last? I wait.

I cannot leave. I am here, always. I also wait. This is our common doom.

So stay. Tell the story.

Who’s listening still, if the story is old? If all in it are dead?

There’s me.

You know the story. It is before you, as I am before you. You’ve seen how the earth rolled

upon itself and spewed these creatures… What they have become, what they have done to

me. To themselves. What they have given and taken from me. This is the story, how they

came, how they went, how they persist. You know all the words. They have forgotten them.

These creatures are yours too. Your mistake, if you will.

[another silence. angry again. another shiver, longer, deeper. Still no fear, though beneath a

long grave gapes, burning fires below. more seizures make these towers tremble. the throne

crumbles at the edges. a gloom in the air]

My mistake, if I will. But you were here. They were simpler under me then. Awed, like

children, and wild. Then they were agency. Then myth and word. And city. And machine. And

always outstretched fingers, my wild children, too eager, to hungry. Too many.

Not so many now.

No, not so many now.

[arm stretches towards the west. silence again. the deep rumbling silence of melancholy

waters. the memory of soft climbing waters, of tempests, of bracken floods, of humid

plagues, of the stench of death. tears like rain as time once more rolls by. long. so long.]

It matters not, then? That they’re too few?

[thunderous laugh. feet and legs and arms stretching wide. an agitation of roots. a new

trembling deep within the grave]

It matters not, for behold my seas, my depths, my corals, how they thrive, like sculptured ivy

and stone flowers. Behold the winds, and my forests, the leaves that stretch and entwine

and climb. Behold my beasts. The wild. And behold my few, how they survived. It matters

not. They are enough.

[again the glassy silence beneath. the few are quiet for now. yet in the man-made stone no

silence at all]