Hillel - If not now, when?

Sprawled on the rock, he puffed breath after breath of dense nicotine smoke into the stale air. A gloom as of centuries of neglect enveloped the two grizzled men as what was left of life fled into the darkness obscuring the work of an army of ambitious hands. Not much to be done now, he said, shaking his head. Very little, corrected his friend. Very little, yes, not much; only a few more months and then back to where it had all begun. Hopefully. Decaying in dignified desperation, he called it. Vegetating in the stillness of meaninglessness. A play in seven acts winding down and not much to cheer for. Not that there had not been cheerful moments but still. One always tends to ask for more. The work, his friend said, is not done yet. Yes, the work. Always the work. One can never get too far away from it. So they got up, dusting their bottoms, freeing themselves from the oppression of the rock that overlooked the sea waiting for the mountain to crumble as wave after wave crashed, hoping its way through what was to become sea, what had been sea, what was now land, and a few more hoots into the desert air that had learnt to remove itself from the haunts of men, ungrateful wretches, puffing away what was good, what was bad, desecrating, despoiling what was theirs, what was never theirs, and then, a blank nothingness settling in as sweetness corrupted itself cloying, a few more puffs now and then off to work. The midnight siren is muffled but is heard more readily. Old men dotting the flat no-land of the beach, dotty, into their dotage, doing deeds unnecessary, in the desert light, dry, dead, disappearing. But is it midnight yet? When stars twinkle out the life of men, slurring their pure light in the beams of man-eyes, stressing last syllables strong, sparking out life, sparkling with life. The wife will know, when he returns at day, of the time she waited, waiting at turn of the clock to where it had been already. And the child will know too who slept with monsters under the bed, no magic for him, no none, he was at the beach then. Tired. Sweating. Cold and shivering. Back limping to a bed that is warm in the light of a noisy sun. Only a few more months of this. Hopefully.