I. JUSTICE
Click here for original version
Geryon learned about justice from his brother quite early.
They used to go to school together. Geryon’s brother was bigger and older,
he walked in front
sometimes broke into a run or dropped on one knee to pick up a stone.
Stones make my brother happy,
thought Geryon and he studied stones as he trotted along behind.
So many different kinds of stones,
the sober and the uncanny, lying side by side in the red dirt.
To stop and imagine the life of each one!
Now they were sailing through the air from a happy human arm,
what a fate. Geryon hurried on.
Arrived at the schoolyard. He was focusing hard on his feet and his steps.
Children poured around him
and the intolerable red assault of grass and the smell of grass everywhere
was pulling him towards it
like a strong sea. He could feel his eyes leaning out of his skull
on their little connectors.
He had to make it to the door. He had to not lose track of his brother.
These two things.
School was a long brick building on a north–south axis. South: Main Door
through which all boys and girls must enter.
North: Kindergarten, its large round windows gazing onto the backwoods
and surrounded by a hedge of highbush cranberry.
Between Main Door and Kindergarten ran a corridor. To Geryon it was
a hundred thousand miles
of thunder tunnels and indoor neon sky slammed open by giants.
Hand in hand on the first day of school
Geryon crossed this alien terrain with his mother. Then his brother
performed the task day after day.
But as September moved into October an unrest was growing in Geryon’s brother.
Geryon had always been stupid
but nowadays the look in his eyes made a person feel strange.
Just take me once more I’ll get it this time,
Geryon would say. The eyes terrible holes. Stupid, said Geryon’s brother
and left him.
Geryon had no doubt stupid was correct. But when justice is done
the world drops away.
He stood on his small red shadow and thought what to do next.
Main Door rose before him. Perhaps—
peering hard Geryon made his way through the fires in his mind to where
the map should be.
In place of a map of the school corridor lay a deep glowing blank.
Geryon’s anger was total.
The blank caught fire and burned to baseline. Geryon ran.
After that Geryon went to school alone.
He did not approach Main Door at all. Justice is pure. He would make his way
around the long brick sidewall,
past the windows of Seventh Grade, Fourth Grade, Second Grade and Boys’
to the north end of the school
and position himself in the bushes outside Kindergarten. There he would stand
motionless
until someone inside noticed and came out to show him the way.
He did not gesticulate.
He did not knock on the glass. He waited. Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world.