Surely Now Surely

...such pocking misfortune, ‘is this how it begins, the freefall spiral into Dantean Hell?’ The city of misfortunes and endless beginnings. The man in the hat jigged for cod, his hat tippling on his head, the mid-afternoon sun forming a cupola over the Waymart spire, the alms man collecting his alms-coppers and calling it a day, the legless man punting the sideways, his stumps cursedly hot, Dejesus working up a beading sweat trying to fasten a brad-stick to the gimp-end of his busted leg, tethering it with wire and force of effort, the harridan collapsing her knickknack table, a stray knickknack rolling under the steps of the church, and the Witness folding pamphlets, his fingers sworn through to the bone. Downward further falling than a fallen angle’s sins. … may the first fallen fall last.

The sky fell upside-down, the shamble leg man’s eyes on the littlest hand on the big clock on the high highest tiptop of the Waymart spire. ‘…it’ll surely move past the secondhand surely...’ he gamed. The littlest hand moved a soupçon to the left, the biggest hand still as a churchmouse. ‘…surely now surely…’ he gamed a second time, eyes fixed on the littlest secondhand. Wearily he walked forwards than back, not once taking his eyes off the littlest hand. ‘…now surely now…’. The littlest secondhand moved a second soupçon, the biggest hand stiller still. The shamble leg man took his eyes off the secondhand littlest hand for no more than a soupçon, just long enough to see a fallen angle fall, a bustle of pamphlets clutched in its angle hands.

The Witness witnessed another Witness witness him witnessing, neither Witness knowing whether the other was witnessing a true Witness or a witless Witness. All this witnessing made both Witnesses witness witlessly, neither one nor the other knowing whether what they were witnessing was witness or witlessness. The legless man, who happened by while the two Witnesses were witnessing one another witness, stopped and said ‘my goodness me, such witnessing should be banned from public view’. A yellow corncrake flew out from the Waymart spire, a pamphlet gripped in its neb, crake-wings waging war with the air and sky.