Priests live there in a vast labyrinth. They annotate the volumes which line the endless bookshelves: prayers to placate the gods; the necessary and proper maintenance of the temple buildings; daily routines, both corporeal and spiritual. In the grandest library of them all, the story of the temple itself is recorded in seven volumes, bound in gold and vermillion, with florid illustrations and fanciful marginalia accompanying the text. Volume One tells of how the foundation stone was laid, according to the mysterious dance of the stars. Volume Two describes a preordained design: teams of architects, masons, woodcutters, glaziers working together to fulfil it. A ship within a bottle, shattering its protective case: Volume Three. Volume Four tells of further, inexorable growth. Volume Five describes the establishment of the Holy of Holies underneath the dome’s lofty pinnacle. As yet, Volumes Six and Seven contain only yawning blank spaces of parchment. The glory of the temple is the huge amphitheatre dedicated to worship: the very embodiment of dizzying eternity. Tribes of pilgrims arrive daily, to admire the frescoes and to prostrate themselves before the altars. Aristocrats dress in ermine cloaks and observe the scene haughtily; others are shabbily arrayed, muddy hems trailing across the marble floors. A group clothed in blue, with serpent-like tails, runs in through the great doors of the temple with irrepressible energy; pilgrims throw themselves on the shrines, shrieking and copulating. Once worship has finished, market stalls are erected and a huge array of items is put up for sale: animal, vegetable, mineral. Peacocks can be seen wandering about; doves rain down guano. Fierce quarrels ignite in gabbled dialect and, if these wars of words turn violent, a pilgrim group might never make it back outside. It is said that even the priesthood turned against itself on one occasion; above the hubbub of the marketplace, the sounds of sacrifice could be heard from beyond the Holy of Holies. At the end of the day, the priests emerge to display the sacred scrolls and clean every millimetre of marble, glass and wood with obsessive thoroughness. Nonetheless, rubbish eventually accumulates. A dirty knapsack is left behind a tomb, or a urine-splattered altar cloth is left unwashed. Dirt becomes contagion. Mildew blooms monstrously in the libraries; spiders nibble the books; rusty liquid drips over the frescoes. The priests become fallible: their teeth fall out and they retreat, mumbling, into the darkest corners of the temple, where they wait nobly for death. Eventually, a stone will crumble from the roof. The beams will disintegrate, sending up clouds of dust. -------------------------------------------------- I lie awake at three in the morning and listen to the gurgles in the pit of my stomach, feel the pulse in my throbbing head. Soon, I will hear the rubbish collectors outside my window, shoving detritus into the steel maws of the lurking vans. I lie awake at three in the morning, conjuring up visions. My body is a temple.