The Hill People

And then the hill people came down riding mules flanked by dogs some feist some liver-spotted hounds and they were ghosts the men and women and their ash-faced children their mules and dogs were ghosts come down from the place where they had lived in scant array like lint in the pockets of their dark land and the men were gaunt and the women were thin and the children had hayseed flung in their hair and the dogs tracked back and forth and they came to the town which wasn’t a town but a circle of nothing surrounding nowhere no river no trees no shadows no time for darkness no slow crawl toward love or death or after death the nowhere town was fast and the people who lived there only wanted more whatever it was and the next thing after that they had appetite but not desire and they didn’t come from anywhere and didn’t know they lived in a place that wasn’t a place and the hill people with their haunted faces said to the people of the town you have taken everything there is and heaped it into a god a god who gives you nothing not even a tree no shade behind the tree no wind to carry the birdsong no branch to quiver with the bird no doubt no hope no lie no mirth no tenderness no shame no knowing hill or horizon or the hand behind it or why no silence nothing no end this was the vision I had.