Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [85]
Then we realized that it was not a cloud, there in the blinding white sky of churchbells and wild disaster hung this huge black bird that must have been two or three miles long, two or three miles wide, and with a wing spread of ten or fifteen miles across the air–
We saw that it ponderously moved… It was such a big bird that when it flapped and flew with a mighty slowmotion in the tragic shrunken sky it was like watching waves of great black water going C-r-a-s-h with a heavy slowness against gigantic icebergs ten miles away, but up in the air and upside down and awful. And banners were streaming from its Feathers. And it was surrounded by a great horde of white Doves, some of them belonging to Doctor Sax– Pippiones, pippiones, the young and silly doves! And the great shadow fell over everything. Our eyes were amazed by the luminescent waving banners still wrangling in the wrong haze yet retaining flashes of the sun in them on the shade side of the Bird —how tremendously these gorgeous feathers of Heaven gleamed and drew Aaaahs and Awwws of hope in the people below who were privileged to be there. It was the Bird of Paradise coming to save mankind as the Snake upward protruded insinuating itself from the earth. Oh its huge grave beak!—its mewing wave leak, the architectural pisses falling, enormous structures of wing and joint, and gone All-Hosannah Golden fowl-flesh curly-ongs in his vast assembled flight–Nobody, not Sax, me, the Devil’s assistant or the Devil himself could keep from seeing the horror and the power roaring in upon this phrale of Lowell. Tortured earth, tortured snake, tortured evil, but this Implacable Bird, with the same huge creaky movement, a million myriad feathers slowly waving in its own breeze, turned down, hood-eyed. Masters of the Hood were there, frowning. As I looked up at that descending World of Bird I felt more fear than I’ve ever felt in all my life, infinitely worse than the fear when I saw the Snake, I instantly remembered the Big Bird I played with my hands chasing the Little Man when I was five years old–the Little Man was about to be caught and his name was Satan– This could not be Judgment Day! There was still hope!
The Snake, as if torn to turn in its own agony and fire to see what haps beyond in that burgoyne air just penetrated and become–and though having no eyes but blindness–the Giant Serpent did accomplish a green tongue licking at the sky with a huge slowmotion futility, I heard and felt a sigh cross the field-
Down came the Bird, slowly, wings at ease, descending with majesty and unbelievable with slow immense ringlets of gilded broadsides, black as Jonah, thunderous-faced, mute beaked.
And just as the Snake had wound itself out to coil once around the rim of the Parapet and was trying to ease his ass out a hundred miles of hugeness and slime–the mighty green coil turned in the sun slithering with underworld masses and vapors, whole slivers of evil cakes toppled from the Snake’s side and fell in the turmoil of its unfoldment– Things fled in terror from that vicinity, it shot out its own cannon clouds of detonation and disaster–and all the whole river was blackened–
Just as this happened–the Great Black Bird came down and picked it up with one mighty jaw movement of the Beak, and lifted it with a Crack that sounded like distant thunder, as all the Snake was snapped and drawn, feebly struggling, splashing sweat-
Lifted it in one gigantic movement that was slow as Eternity-
Heaved skyward with its ugly burthen– Rollypolly mass of snake, curlicue, thrashing in every way upon the imprint heavens of poor life–how could anything take it in its beak–
And raised up into the bedazzling blue hole of heaven in the clouds as all birds, eagles, feather brains, sparrows and doves Squakked & Yakked in the golden bell ringing morning of the Curlicue, the wild May Time rope was being thrown across the Belfry, the bell was clanging with a ding dong, the Lord rose on Easter morning,