having lived in other people like a monk inside their cell – where the walls are made of hands – having spent lifetimes practising the taste of curses – whispers – stones – bread – endeavouring to do them justice – having walked the geography of foreign fingertips – having made sore those feet desiring to walk unshod up the slopes of all of them on the way to holiness – and at the end having travelled back through their bewildered eyes and stories to what was imagined as a self – only to find that there was a luminous nothing – was itself as thrilling and eviscerating as redemption was always reputed to be – in the best stories – having been stripped of all illusions – beneath that cloud when the downpour broke – when skin slid away and creation lay unclaimed – stretching away to the very extremities of all perception – having drunk the wind in all its coldness – having been shown that all was lost and recovered – all was unselved and instant – having known --