BUILDING BABEL (Excerpt)

By GS Michaels

Chorus: Were you there, at Babel?

Voice: Yes. I was at Babel.

Chorus: Tell us about Babel.

Voice: It was before the Burning Bush. And before the Sermon on the Mount.

Chorus: (Quietly) Yes.

Voice: Cheops was only a distant cousin. Ankor but a toadstool next to Babel.

Chorus: (Louder) Yes.

Voice: It rose like a sequoia among brambles. Many bodies, many minds, a single purpose. A merging multitude borne by a vision.

Chorus: (Strong) Yes.

Voice:  The bricks went up. Grew up. From hand to hand. Every hand a link, a convergence of flesh. Father to son to daughter to mother to so son to father it grew - no - germinated and leapt from their will: a blossom of will to the pulse of possibility.

Voice:  We were as fingers of a hand

Voice: The hands of lovers

Voice: It was like climbing a mountain

Voice: That we piled ahead of us

Voice: A staircase, rising like a song

Voice: From the throats of angels

Voice: Rising, rippling, rushing up, up, up. Plunging headlong into nowhwere that was suddenly somewhere no one else had ever been before.