This life is not that life
The First Death Of God
He hadn’t thought to die so imperceptibly. He always imagined he would cross a dark river of mist in a splendid boat, but he rises early as usual, dips bread in his tea, puts on his autumn coat, swings his front door open toward the south, and greets the ambling daylight in the street.
At first, he cannot see that he is dead. His town is transformed from one of modest bricks to a metropolis of giant sculptures and statues. He walks down a great boulevard, up wide entrance steps, and enters an echoing hall.
“God?” he asks — and a voice that took refuge in his mother’s womb answers:
“God. Do as you will.”
He ascends a curving marble staircase until he emerges on a terrace high above the city. A shivering spot of a girl far below catches his eye with her fingers hooked upward. He changes one of her tears into a copper coin and the breeze that bites her bare arms into a sheepskin blanket.
Satisfied, he sits on the fat stone rail of the terrace for a moment and admires his desires. He looks outward to the fields around the city, sees seven herds of horses mottled on the ground, then blows a cloud over them that rains a cure on their galloping sickness.
