We saw you then, we do not watch you now, you’re no one to us, not anymore. Lost to us, that’s what you are – lost, and who will ever find you? We will not; we are not looking. What interest have we in you; we have other things to do; we have our tasks, our projects; we are busy, always busy, and for that reason you are always far from our minds.
But sometimes, unbidden, a memory comes. Sometimes one of us looks up and remembers: him. Him: you. That is how we remember you, by starts, by turns, and we look up from our labours, we who are so busy, and it comes to us, our early days, when we were young and you were young, but it was really by your youth that we were young; in truth, we lived from your youth, we drew strength from it, for it was the youth of hope, of the great dawn. It was our youth: the whole sky, the dawn; everything was possible; the world gave itself anew.
Who were we, so young with your youth? What had we become? Ah, we were young, then – young as you were young, and full of hope! But our youth was a second youth – or a third; our innocence was innocence regained. Your splendour was that you lived youth and innocence for the first time. What splendour! How splendidly did you greet the day! How splendid, your strong arms that stretched up towards the day!
The morning of the world, that’s what we called it. And you were a son of the morning, just as we, watching you, likewise became sons and daughters of the morning. But what happened? When did it set in, the long decline? About when did it start, the decline? Because things are different now, aren’t they? Things have changed irrevocably, haven’t they? It’s all changed; the earth turned from light into darkness; the great earth turned its great bulk away from the light. Night was coming; darkness was coming, the long wane of strength.
You were stronger than us, then. Stronger: you had not lived before, as we had lived before; you had been innocent from the start, but ours was a borrowed innocence; it was not ours, not truly. We became weary before you’d even noticed how the day had changed; for it had changed. As a boy, you cycled around the housing estates. Older, you walked around those estates at night with others, and a bottle of Thunderbird. Older still, and you fell ill in those estates; you fell and did not rise, and so passed the afternoon of your life, recumbent, the sun no longer at full strength above you, no longer the splendid sky; now the white and indefinite expanse; all cloud, a single, unbroken cloud that had covered the world.
What chance did you have? Yet older, and you rose, but you did not stretch your arms up in the morning. Something in you was destroyed; strength had turned against you; you were not young. Who were you then? And who were we? Shadows of ourselves, who were only shadows. Shadows of what we were, and we were already shadows, nothing more. What a curse you were! What a burden! It was if you lived from us, that you took our strength.
What could we do but let you go? What other fate awaited us? If let you go we must, then … We let you go; you went; lightened, we imagined, disencumbered, we imagined, lighter in step. Where would you go? The day was yours, the housing estates spread in all directions; the whole world had been conquered. Space was accounted for, and time – time was worktime, and it was time for you to work. You disappeared; we busied ourselves with tasks; we watched everyone, we watched no one, we who had taken the place of the old gods and were waiting, yet for the new gods, we who were only placekeepers, the ones never quite there, the waiters, the watchers, the ones without power.
But now we fear we will be stronger than you, who were once so strong. That is why we do not look for you. We are afraid; afraid to know in you our own ruin – afraid to have it confirmed, to see what we were not and never were, to see it in you. Who are you, now? Where are you? Forbidden questions. We do not speak of you. But sometimes, still, memories come unbidden. Sometimes, yet, we remember your youth and your hopes, and how our youth and hope were reborn with you.
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