Pool_2

the handiwork familiar to churches of Cashel and Glendalough. Debts are everywhere, on such grand scale. Debts of spirituality. Debts of craft. Debts of lineage. Debts of art. There are so, so many, debts and not all can be repaid. Do people in their comings and goings ever consider the trails of debt which they generate? What is consequence, really? Just a bill to be paid. Action - reaction. Force - momentum. Momentum - inevitability. In the weight of the earth, every grain of sand tallies. In mass madness, every voice lends to the deafening cry. The only question is whether someone somewhere has the tab. Someone always does, always. On the way to this rise, the land of still unclaimed promise, one debt, long thought forgotten, is nonetheless, called by the hound. In a small stone building, of medieval vintage, just off the main flow of pilgrimage, a man of about thirty years, stood up from bending over a wooden yoke that he was repairing. He startled, not hearing his company arrive, a towering brawny man in scruff hunting kilt, dirked in sock and belt, appearing to be a woodsman. "May I help you? I didn't hear anybody.. you, you've been here long?" Ignoring the question, the pilgrim spoke ominously. "Rent. I'm here to collect." As the proprietor politely laughed to correct an obvious mistake, that he owned this parcel of land along with the building on it, he was again ignored and overspoken in a tone that freezes fire, "Rent!" He was looking into a face from hell. Silence of chill and desperate quaking expectation was melted in a flare of condemnation. "A young lassie was kept for four years, on your account, in a lodging she did not elect, sir. I am come, begging God's pardon, for your portion of that reckoning." Recognition and terror were immediate, with a weakening of the bladder. Wavering bodily tensions communicated indecision. Drop the yoke? Use the yoke? Plead? Would