In this forgotten region of the colossal country, the landscape was nothing but flatness. No mountains, no valleys, not even trees. It was a neverending vastness and barrenness: rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds. The only being of significant height stood in the far east, known to the inhabitants as A Thousand Plateaus.
A Thousand Plateaus was an artificial landmark, composed of a thousand graves, under each buried a baby. A Thousand Plateaus was constructed overnight, in the wake of a thousand casualities. A thousand casualties of the firstborns.
In the juvescence of the year, a traveling merchant arrived, unloading a thousand metal jars from fifty camels.
Never encountered a visitor their entire life, the inhabitants gathered around, curious.
"I would meet you upon this honestly," said the merchant disarmingly, starting distributing a thousand metal jars. "I've come here for the future kings and queens, leaders of our generation. With this magic formula, your firstborns shall be blessed with wisdom and health. Mix the formula with boiling water, for our future kings and queens."
And so the inhabitants brought the metal jars home, with the formula ivory silky liquid was fed to the blessed firstborns.
The merchant was patient. He sat himself under a Judas tree and waited, until the first burst of howling broke out in the night. "I have not made this show purposelessly." The merchant left with a complacent smile, the camels lined up after him mechanically.
All the trees were cut down overnight, for the sake of building a thousand baby coffins. Dogwoods or chestnut, all eradicated. No exception.
And so were A Thousand Plateaus erected. Each plateau claimed by a baby, a baby who could have gone against the time, who could have achieved something great yet failed to meet his time. Leaving the bereaved inhabitants to a sleepy corner among windy spaces.
Indebted to:
Gerontion, T. S. Eliot (1920)
