konya the shepherd (for lenny kaye)

(The following is excerpted from Babel by Patti Smith, G.P. Putnam's Sons, N.Y.)

this is the story of konya the shepherd. the land was parched and dry and the throats of the women were dry and folding. the sheep had long since been slaughtered and no lamb had escaped ritual. none, that is, save shamsa the black. the people had given up their will to dream their desire for prayer and even the need for visitation. only the arched necks of scourged believers, the pop eyes of the lookout station and the ancient holy men in suspension remained. relics. that was all.

but the radiant rhythum of change...potential change...the reign of words that whetted the palates and plates of man... the charge of light that electrified sky and eye...days and nights that made the earth moist and caressed the mouths of flowers... dew on the lips of creation...the expectant pouts of wet and static children...all were going...literally gone.

there was nothing, nothing save konya the shepherd, resting his head against a stone and gazing at the crisp dry sky. black and white—a spray of diamonds on a sheet of carbon, sometimes the dust would cover him and he'd awake covered over with layers of black mist. travelers who passed would laugh and say that he has been kissed by shamsa the black, shamsa—the only survivor of the great flood of prayers that induced the great myth and the bloodbath of the lamb.

the be lis tolled and the world turned. he was no longer the shepherd, he was konya the amateur astronomer—the watcher. the guardian of night, he had beei i kissed by shamsa the black and so he was kissing the sky. night after night, star upon star. night of planetary harmonics, night of perpetual change, each night each night, soon the night was wet with kisses, soon there was a storm brewing and the rain was also soon in coming.

there things were springing, the flock, the songs of women and the prayers, they sang not of the bad season but of konya—the sky kisser—the spook sheep, soon the harvests would come, they soon would be threshing and weaving the prayer mats, soon the lambs would be fat and the stones of ritual cut.

the bells tolled and the world turned. konya the boy aimed arrows into the sun. konya the boy shot arrows into the profile of a butterfly poised on the nose of a stalk.

Lynn Goldsmith

Copyright © 1974. 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 by Patti Smith.