Dymer by C.S. Lewis - Canto 4

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Canto four of Dimer Thimer by C. S. Lewis Canto four.
First came the peal that split the heavens apart straight overhead.
Then silence, then the rain. Twelve miles of downward water,
like one dart and in one leap, were launched along

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the plain to break the budding flower and flood the grain,
and keep with dripping sound and under song amid the
wheeling thunder all night long. He put his hands before
his face. He stooped blind with his hair. The loud drops,
grimm tattoo beat him to earth like summer grass. He

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drooped amazed, while sheeted lightning large and blue, blinked wide
and pricked the quivering eyeball through. Then, scrambling to his
feet with downward head, he fought into the tempest as
chance led. The wood was mad, soughing of branch and
straining was there, drumming of water. Light was none, nor

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knowledge of himself. The trees complaining, and his own throbbing
heart seemed mixed in one, one sense of bitter loss
and beauty undone. All else was blur and chaos and rain,
steam and noise, and the confusion of a dream Aha
Earth hates a miserable man against him. Even the clouds

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and winds conspire. Heaven's voice smote Dimer's ear drum as
he ran, its red throat, plagued the dark with corded fire,
barbed flame, coiled flame that ran like living wire, charged
with disastrous current, left and right about his path, hell
blue or staring white, stab, stab, blast, all at once?

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What's he to fear? Look there that cedar shriveling in
swift blight, even where he stood, And there ah that
came near. Oh, if some shaft would break his soul outright?
What ease? So too, unload and scatter quite on the darkness,
This wild beating in his skull, too burning to endure,
too tense and full, all lost and driven away, even

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her name unknown, O fool to have wasted for a
kiss time when they could have talked. An angry shame
was in him. He had worshiped Earth, and this the
venomed clouds, fire spitting from the abyss. This was the truth. Indeed,
the world's intent, unmasked and naked, now the thing it meant.

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The storm lay on the forest a great time, wheeled
in its thundery circuit, turned, returned, still, through the dead
leaved darkness, through the slime of standing pools and slots
of clay. Storm churned went dimer still. The knotty lightning
burned a long black air. He heard the unbroken sound

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of water right in the hollower ground. He cursed it
in his madness, flung it back, sorrow as wild as
young men's sorrows are, till after midnight, when the tempest's
track drew off between two clouds, appeared one star. Then
his mood changed, and this was heavier far when bit

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by bit rarer, and still more rare, the weakening thunder
ceased from the cleansed air, when leaves began to drip
with dying rain, and trees showed black against the glimmering sky,
When the night birds flapped out and called again above him,
when the silence, cool and shy came stealing to its own,

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and streams ran by, now audible amid the rustling wood. Oh,
then came the worst hour for flesh and blood. It
was no nightmare now, with fiery stream too horrible to last,
able to blend itself in all things in one hurrying dream.
It was the waking world that will not end, because

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hearts break that is not foe nor friend. Where sane
and settled knowledge first appears of work day desolation with
no tears. He halted, then foot sore, weary to death,
and heard his heart beating in solitude, when suddenly the
sound of sharpest breath in drawn with pain, and the

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raw smell of blood surprised his sense. Near By to
where he stood came a long, whimpering moan, a broken word,
a rustle of leaves where some live body stirred. He
groped towards the sound. What brother, brother, who groaned, I'm hit,
I'm finished, let me be. Put out your hand then

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reach me. No the other, don't touch fool, Damn you
leave me. I can't see where are you? Then more
groans they've done for me. I've no hands. Don't come
near me, no day, don't leave me? Oh my god?
Is it near day? Soon? Now? A little longer? Can

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you sleep? I'll watch for you. Sleep? Is it that's
a head? But none till then listen. I've bled too
deep to last out till the morning. I'll be dead
within the hour. Sleep. Then I've heard it said they
don't mind at the last, but this is hell. If
i'd the strength, I have such things to tell. All

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trembling in the dark and sweated over like a man
reared in peace, unused to pain, sat Dimer near him
in the lightless cover, afraid to touch, and shamefaced to refrain.
Then bit by bit, and often checked again with agony.
The voice told on the place was dark, that neither

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saw the other's face. There is a city which men
call in scorn, the perfect city eastward of this wood.
You've heard about the place there I was born. I'm
one of them. Their work, their sober mood, the ordered life,
the laws are in my blood, a life well less

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than happy, something more than the red greed and lusts
that went before all. In one day, one man, and
at one blow, brought ruin on us all. There was
a boy, blue eyes, large limbs, where all he had
to show you need no greater profits to destroy. He
seemed a man asleep. Sorrow and joy had passed him by,

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the dreamiest, safest man, the most obscure. Until this curse began. Then,
how or why it was? I cannot say. This Dimer,
this fool baby pink and white, went mad beneath his
quiet face. One day with nothing said, he rose and
laughed outright before his master. Then in all our sight,

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even where we sat to watch, he struck him dead,
and screamed with lefter once again, and fled. Lord, how
it all comes back, How still the place is, and
he there, lying dead, only the sound of a blue
bottle buzzing, sharpened faces strained gaping from the benches all

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around the dead man, hunched and quiet with no wound,
and minute after minute terror creeping with dreadful hopes to
set the wild heart leaping. Then, one by one, at random,
no word spoken, we slipped out to the sunlight, and
away we felt the empty sense of something broken and

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comfortless adventure. All that day men loitered at their work
and could not say what trembled at their lips, or
what new light was in girl's eyes. Yet we endured
till night. Then I was lying wide awake in bed,
shot through with tremulous thought, lame hopes, and sweet desire

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of reckless days, with burning head. And then there came
a clamor from the street, came nearer, nearer, nearer, stamping
feet and screaming song and curses, and a shout of
who's for dimer? Dimer? Up and out. We looked out
from our window, thronging there a thousand of our people,

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girls and men, raved and reviled, and shouted by the
glare of torches and of bonfire blaze. And then came
tumult from the street beyond again Dimer. They cried, and
farther off there came the sound of gunfire and the
gleam of flame. I rushed down with the rest O.
We were mad after this, It's all nightmare. The black

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sky between the house tops framed was all we had
to tell us that the old world could not die,
and that we were no gods. The flood ran high
when first I came, but after was the worse O
to recall on Dimer rest the curse. Our leader was
a hunchback with red hair. Bran was his name. He

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had that kind of force about him that will hold
your eyes fast. There as in ten miles of green,
one patch of gorse will hold them. Do you know?
His lips were coarse, but his eyes, like a prophet's,
seemed to fill the whole face, and his tongue was
never still. He cried as Dimer broke, will break the chain.

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The world is free. They taught you to be chaste
and labor and bear orders and refrain, refrain from what
all's good enough. We'll taste whatever is life, murmurs from
the waist beneath the mind who made the reasoning part,
the jailer of the wild gods. In the heart we

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were a ragtail crew, wild haired, half dressed, all shouting
up for dimer, up away, yet each one always watching
all the rest and looking to his back. And some
were gay like drunk men. Some were cringing, pinched, and
gray with terror dry on the lip. The older ones

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had had the sense enough to bring their guns. The
wave where I was swallowed swelled and broke after long
surge into the open square, and here there was more light,
new clamor woke. Here. First I heard the bullets sting
the air, and went hot round the heart. Our lords
were there in barricade, with all their loyal men. For

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every one man loyal bran led ten. Then charge, and
sheer and bubbling sobs of death. We hovered on their front,
like swarming bees. Their spraying bullets came no time for breath.
I saw men's stomachs fall out on their knees, and
shouting fits while they shouted freeze into black bony masks.

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Before we knew we're into them. Swine die, then that's
for you. The next that I remember was a lull
and sated pause. I saw an old old man lying
before my feet with shattered skull, and both my arms
dripped red. And then came bran and at his heels

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A hundred murderers ran with prisoners now clamoring to take
and try them, and burn them, wedge their nails up,
crucify them. God Once, the lying spirit of a cause,
with maddening words, dethrones the mind of men. There past
the reach of prayer. The eternal laws hate them. Their

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eyes will not come clean again, But doom and strong
delusion drive them. Then, without ruth, without rest, the iron
laughter of the immortal mauthics goes hooting after and we
had firebrand too. Tower after tower fell sheathed in thundering flame.
The street was like a furnace mouth. We had them

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in our power. Then was the time to mock them,
and to strike, to flay men and spit women on
the pike, bidding them dance wherever the most shame was done.
The doer called on Dimer's name, faces of men in
torture from my mind. They will not go away. The
east lay still in darkness. When we left the town behind,

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flaming to light the fields. We'd had our will, We
sang ho, We will make the frost distill from time's
gray forehead into living dew, and break whatever has been
and build new. Day found us on the border of
this wood, blear, eyed and pale. Then the most part

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began to murmur and to lag, crying for food and shelter.
But we dared not answer. Bran wherever in the ranks
the murmur ran, He'd find it, you there whispering up,
You sneak, reactionary, eh, come out and speak. Then there'd
be shrieks, a pistol shot, a cry, and some one down.

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I was the third he caught. The others pushed me
out beneath his eye, saying, he's here here, captain. Who'd
have thought my old friends? But I know now I've
been taught. They cut away my two hands and my
feet and laughed and left me for the birds to eat.

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Oh God's name, if I had my hands again and
dimer here, it would not be my blood. I am
stronger now than he is old, with pain. One grip
would make him mine. But it's no good. I'm dying fast. Look, stranger,
where the wood grows lighter. It's the morning, stranger, Dear,

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don't leave me. Talk a little while. Come near. But Daimer,
sitting hunched with knee to chin, close to the dying man,
answered no word. His face was stone. There was no
meaning in his wakeful eyes. Sometimes the others stirred and
fretted near his death, and Diimer heard, yet sat like

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one that neither hears nor sees, And the cold east
whitened beyond the trees. End of Canto four.