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Experiment 7

The Creation

page 31

The Creation.

... in the beginning God created heaven and earth ....

Twelve o'clock Saturday night and the new day is about to begin ... the day of rest. A gigantic flame-lit cyclopean eye glares out and over the wayward ones and mutely blares its warning of the seventh day, the end and the beginning. Under the blue black brackish sky a canopy of orange flavoured mist hovers above the city, colouring the streets shamelessly with brazen women and men of gold.

A tired old man shuffles along slowly, falteringly with an occasional stagger. His shoulders shrug and his head sinks lower closing the scene from his vision. In one hand he cutches a large silver cup with his name newly etched beside other etched names, names studding the side and base, names that had possessed years before, each scratch symbolic of another minor god whose creations had pleased and not disturbed the tyrant. In the other, a flower stem, extinguished flame, dangles uselessly with the head crushed between the palm and fingers of the hanging arm. There had been a pot, but it lay shattered some hundred yards back and the earth and moss had quickly fallen from the stalk. Only a few specks of dirt remain and at every twitch of the old man's limb the number diminish ... pity the flower ... pity man.

The tottering figure stumbles in the shadow of a pedestal and crashes involuntarily onto the paving-stones. He lies lifeless over his dented prize. The thorn shielded stalk is stretched parallel to the crack in the stone and the petals tremble and flutter in the tightening, earth worn, sallow dead fingers.

The statue, unaware of its farcical position, maintains its attitude towards the citizen below and remains staring stonily at the bloodless tip of his long blunt sabre.

... and he rested on the seventh day.