To Dimitris Danis "amici amico"

Although not altogether an impossibility.  All the same, starting from horse back over desert planes, perhaps, perhaps  -  well, but I am Alexandros and my time though hallowed must be borrowed.  But he who rides through my dreams that long haul from location to reality knows that if I am nothing I can always shelter in his shadow. 

Saving him.  I asked:  "what is your name?"  "Attalongo,"  he replied.  "where are you from?"  I then enquired.  He answered:  "From before,"  not to be outdone I said:  "Where are you going?"  and so he said:  "To Beyond."

Analysing suddenly, I saw a horseman galloping towards the more distant horizon.  And knew him at once for Darius, King Of Babylon.  Whom I had destroyed.  Now, with what a sense of loss I saw him! And, seeing, could not by myself recall so great a grief, a loss so keen, a deprivation quite so exquisite.  What comfort or what consolation could I find now, and where?  They call me the rainbow of Macedon, but the rainbow casts no shadow after all. 

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Movement

Music fades under speech

Yes, indeed, Alexandros will return, night  -  changed at dawn into the dreams of dead Darius.  He will come astride  Bucephalos out of the clustered stars, and down and then along the half-made road: up to the solitary house.  Looping the reigns over the gate-post I'll come up to your door.  Where else could I,  should I, go?  Darius, Darius, I rode a way out of your dreams, and so that is where Alexander must and shall return.

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Turns front to speak

Music fades under speech

Dare to dream only if enamoured of reality:  for only the dream itself is real.  The other?  Probably a gaunt fiction only.  No.  None.  There is none.  More there can not be, any.  Either eventually by recognition only becomes neither.  The face twisted by the distorting glass expresses what the eye has never seen.  Beyond this the eye has never seen.  Beyond this, no more.  Not that way can there be now, ever any. 

Music rises and holds

Turns

Moves slowly round and up to stage centre, back.

Here there is a slow solid bedlike platform covered with a crimson blanket.

Stands at left end of this, looking down.

Pause.

Music fades.

Speaks:

In the dawning of another day the bells of Babylon ring out.  Do not wake me, for I am for another life.

Music rises and  holds

Draws back blanket as if bed.

Lies down, covered with blanket.

Great sun-like apotheosis appears on cyclorama.

Music continues.

Curtain.

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