God was still walking around in the wilderness
fascinated and puzzled. He kept trying to show
me how to take the words from dreams and old
magazine covers, to make something out of them.
He was preoccupied for hours and hours, but
he never spoke his mind plainly. He did not
like people to feel too comfortable around him.
He was far more troubled than anyone now wants
to remember. This is when the world was
mostly without form, but it wasn't void: it is
just that everything made only one kind of sense.
You didn't have good words like automobile or deduction,
though you had rebuke and anoint. Then God
bent down and picked up a handful of desert.
Not really. It's just how we talk about such things.
He picked up a handful of desert and there came
a great tempest. Then there were worlds standing in line,
waiting on street corners and in train stations. Then
God went a great way into that wilderness, whistling
and singing in bright garments. I watched him go.
Everybody did. Then his stars fell around us like swallows,
stricken and stunned: That’s when the people began scooping
them into their pockets and purses, trying on names, in-
venting excuses. That’s when I tried on my own garment,
drunk on fear and craving. That’s how I began whistling and singing.