Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [79]
There was a great clatter of spades above–some wood, some iron. I could only see vague masses beyond the crowded antennaed gnomes. Among them wildly flew the Gray Gnome Moths that made the air multiform and crazy as their pinched tragic visages looked out from their night up on the flowing fretworks of the fire, in all heaven’s dark cave soundless, wild, and listening. The Angels of the Judgment Day were making great tremendous clang across the way. I could hear some of the rattling birds that we’d seen at Dracut Tigers. Hubbubs were rising by the minute outside the Castle. The ground again shuddered, this time shook the leaning Wizard off a foot.
“Old Nakebus wants to maw up his earth too fast.”
“And you’ll ride his back?” grinned Doctor Sax with one hand elongated dramatically on the faded wood edge of the rail–
“I’ll lead him through all the land, a hundred feet ahead, bearing my burden torch, till we reach the alkalis of Hebron and you’ll never make a move to stitch my path. It was a fore-ordained path, and one, that you, particularly among the unselected unchosen kind, but willing to put on the wrong regalia and think you are, don’t know your own madness– why you breathe when the sun comes up–Why oo breathe in the morning Ootsypoo.J—I’d rather lead my candle Satan soul with my Promised Snake dragon-ing the earth in a path of slime fires and destruction behind me-meek, small, white, old, the image of a soul, leading my candlelight brigades, my wild and massive Cardinals that you see here ravened like hawks along a line-wall hungry to eat the stones of Victory–with bare sand to wedge and wash it down– Pilgrimages of the Snake– We will darken the very sun in our march. Hamlets will be gobbled up entire, my boy. Cities of skyscrapers will feel the weight of this scale–won’t sit to weigh, or not for long,—and scales and Justice have nothing to do with a dragon’s sides– whether she holds alms, or balms, in her milky embowered palm– Or your Seminal Dovists, half of whom arrested now rot below–I see them floating in the lake of milky slime– Fires shall eat your Lowells–the Snake’ll make the subways his feeding-place–with one coy flick he’ll snop up whole Directories and hsts of the census, liberals and reactionaries will be washed down by the rivers of his drink, the Left and the Right will form a single silent tapeworm in his indestructible tube– No avail your ordinary fire departments and dull departments–the earth’s returned to fire, the western wrath is done.”
And Doctor Sax, weakly smiling, held a long pale hand over his heart, where the vacuum ball was pocketed–and waited.
Now a mighty sigh rose from the Pit, it grew in size, rumbled, shook the earth–a great stench rose, all the noblemen covered their noses and some turned away and some ran out the door. The horrid stench of the ancient Snake that has been growing in the world-ball like a worm in the apple since Adam and Eve broke down and cried.
“No need to save your little flijabets–Nature’s got no time to dally-hassel with its insects—” sneers the Wizard. The stench of the Snake reminds me of certain alleys I’ve been in–mixed with a horrible hot scent that no bird has ever known, comes up from the bottom of the world, the middle of the earth’s core–a smell of pure fire and burning vegetables and coals of other Epochs and Ages–the brimstone of the actual brimstone underground shelf–burning now but in the nibble of the Great Snake