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The Triumph of Perfect Love 

The state of the world was evil: convulsed by war and injustice, it constantly collapsed further into bloody misery. The eternal cry of the suffering peoples of Earth pierced Heaven with ever greater insistence. Deliver us, was their plea, from hatred and cruelty, and make men love their neighbours as themselves! Now in Heaven there was an angel whose name was Forethought, who was a friend to humanity. He threw himself at the feet of God and implored him to answer the screams of the afflicted, and God smiled on his prayer and sent him forth with perfect love on his wings, to distill it into the hearts of men. As he flew over every island and continent, all negative and destructive emotions were banished. Soldiers on the front line fell joyously into the arms of the enemy; would-be criminals cast away the tools of their wickedness.

In the time that followed, injustice became a meaningless concept. Now that every man and woman loved their neighbour as their self, murder, war and every form of prejudice were things of the past. There was no place for theft, when all property was held in common. Prosperous nations rushed to share their wealth with the less fortunate. To take sexual pleasure by force would have been as unthinkable as to refuse to give it freely. There was no marriage, no lasting partnership, for no-one loved any one human being more than another. Even strangers were beloved, and so great was humanity’s love for the unborn that contraception and abortion were forgotten. To the children born of these liaisons every adult was a parent, but there were no families and no friendships.

People found they had no need for art, since they were everything to one another. The great works of the past, all drenched in the high colour and tragedy of negative passion, meant nothing to them, so they burned poetry and paintings to warm the weak and old in winter. 

Because the angel Forethought had sped only the vocal pleas of suffering humans, articulate even in their pain, now the love of man for man drove out any pity for the other beings with whom they shared their world. Countless species were extinguished as the human population, swollen by love, tried to squeeze enough food from the earth, yet her resources were found to be finite at last. As famine swept the continents and islands, life became torture. To die of hunger was bad, but to see those around you die at the same time and feel the pain of each as your own, that was worse than unbearable! They did bear it; they had to; but every day the cry went up to Heaven more and more: Deliver us, Lord, from this curse of perfect love!

Forethought had a younger brother, the angel Afterthought. He came to pity humanity in this hour, and he abased himself before God for their sake. But his prayer found no fulfilment. When will these wretched creatures be satisfied? God asked him, unsmiling. They wanted love. Let them starve on love!

The End

 

Concerning Lions

The wounded lioness strains upwards, blood streaming where the arrows pierce her. Shameful the victory over that splendid suffering! Cybele’s lions, unconquered, answered only to she whose yoke they bore, Mother Rhea who has the mastery of the wild at Cnossus. Their roar was madness.

Benaiah the son of Jehoiada killed a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen – snow in the Holy Land, long melted where there are no lions now, though the brilliant white and the tawny danger of it still dazzle on the page.

There are also lions in Homer. They fight, they roar, they cut bloody swathes through the sheepfolds, regardless of the spears in their chests, and it is their very courage that kills them.

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