Paradise

I knew paradise once, and there were not any palm trees. There was not even much sunshine, except in the summer. It was made up of little things, poor things, like love, like trust, like soft words and old songs, and light that can never be matched by invention, the sort of light that can interpret darkness, the flame that hovers above the wick. Everything other than this (and all things are other) has been hypocrisy, at best no more than hope, and hope misplaced, a grotesque masquerade, an aping insult to what it cannot comprehend. This is what we mean when we speak of taking God's name in vain. What a sad and pale shadow we cast, accomplishing nothing other than the obstruction of light. Do you really think that I would cry over such a thing? What has this nothing, this fabricated dream, to say in the remembrance of purity?