A Village Burns

A Village Burns:

It was 1673. That was the date stamped on one of the documents
found once the ashes cooled and the debris laid barren on the land.
It was bound in a leather sack that had been tossed down a well shaft.
However, by the slightest chance, the leather satchel hooked on to the
water-bucket. When a passer-by went to look for water, up came this
royal looking bag with the document sealed in wax. Red wax, royal
wax.

Some of the villagers had escaped. Some had heard of the impending
raid commanded by no less than King Louis himself. It seems that
a nobleman from the low country had managed to steal a kiss and
a glance from the fair Lady that had been recently courted by the
King. The King seeing no need for undue competition had the Lady
sent to her village in exile. Lady Catherine was no fool, and no sooner
had she left the castle, she stopped the carriage, mounted a horse, and
galloped to the village to warn the towns people. But Lady Catherine
was too late.
She arrived to see the glow of the evening sky an un-natural red.
Most of the peasants were murdered and left to burn, half dead
as they were, they were left to suffer to the very end for the sin of
their gracious lady.
Some wondered if cruelty had reached new heights; but men have
wondered that since the beginning of human and sub-human history.

A congress of baboons is hardly a welcoming community. And
by then evolution had billions of years of continuity. We ask
the same some five-hundred years hence. Have we come further?
Are we less the barbarians that we were one thousand years ago.

Is it science that courts art, or is it art that courts science; or do
neither care a damn about the other. Is our divided mind and
our divided hemisphere of any less savage temperament. Nature
is not only roses in summer and waves of crystal energy. She
is savage and mother earth brutally kills, albeit in a more random
fashion.

                         A Village a Glow (1673)

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