she was a daughter of pan and had been wandering in a landscape of trees
and flowers. the air was sweetened with amaranth. there were acorns on
the grass. a chain of ochre mountains ranged all around her, bare and
stark and oddly beautiful. she knew that the mountains were the forms of
sleeping gods, the ancient forgotten gods.
it was a brilliant day. the sun was benevolent in its universal golden
splendour. there were a few lovely clouds, and within one of the clouds
was the exact form of an angel in flight. she was in the homeland of
human happiness. she was happy, and had been eternally happy, like a
fortunate child. she had known no suffering and had always been
surrounded with love.
but as she wandered in this realm of happiness she came upon three men
who stood puzzled before a gigantic tomb. the men were shepherds. she
had never seen them before. they were grizzled, but seemed harmless. on
the enormous tomb there was an inscription.
she was one of the daughters of pan, and yet the inscription troubled
her. the men fretted over the inscription and kept pointing at it, while
their shadows took on sinister shapes. she noticed that the man who
pointed most ardently at the word arcadia had formed the shadow of a man
with a scythe. this troubled her more.
they asked her about the tomb. but she had never seen a tomb before.
they explained what it was. she turned pale. they contemplated the
inscription and the mystery of the tomb till the shadows grew shorter
and stranger ond the wind-quivering grass. the world had darkened into
tones of a deep bright sombre beauty. sadness seemed to be leaking into
the happy kingdom of the earth.
and when she left the men, who remained discussing the inscription for
what seemed the rest of their lives, she was never quite so happy again.
and her life now seemed as a bright golden dream of ambiguities when she
woke up in the dark.
ben okri – in arcadia
