I will never fall.And then heaven set the tables.

Woe, woe, the great city, she who was dressed in fine linen, purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls! This is the city the whole world is in love with. Terraced gardens spilling green over marble, music falling out of every archway, fountains applauding themselves in the lamplight — and down at the water, the fleets of every nation moored nose-in, riding low with silk and spice and gold. She is genuinely, dazzlingly beautiful. That is exactly the trap. Revelation 18 : 16

For she says in her heart, "I sit a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see mourning." Over her great gates she has spelled her whole heart out in jeweled letters taller than a man, gemstones drinking the torchlight and giving it back in colours: I WILL NEVER FALL. Underneath, the traffic pours through the arch and not one person glances up. Nobody reads it any more. It has always been there. It always will be. That is the point of it. Revelation 18 : 7

merchandise of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet… and cinnamon, incense, perfume, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, sheep, horses, chariots… Walk her market at midnight and the aisle simply does not end. Plate stacked like harvests, cloth in colours that cost a year's wages a yard, spice smoking sweet over the stalls, whole hills of wheat, gilded pens of cattle. Buyers' hands and sellers' scales flashing in the lamp-gold. Everything in the world is for sale here — and the till is still ringing at midnight. Revelation 18 : 12–13

…and cinnamon, incense, perfume… sheep, horses, chariots, and people's bodies and souls. The list of everything Babylon buys runs for two long verses, and then it ends — in the same breath as the cattle and the wheat — with people. At the far end of the aisle, where the lamps thin out, a line of them is being led past the stalls with their eyes down. Nobody hurries them, and nobody looks away for them either. One slow pass, and behind them the gold keeps changing hands. Of everything in her ledger, this is the line heaven reads. Revelation 18 : 13

I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out of her, my people, that you have no participation in her sins." Before one thing happens to the city, a small side gate — humble, half-forgotten, as far from the jeweled boast as a door can get — swings open on oiled hinges. And out they come by dark: bundles on shoulders, children carried sleeping, lamps wrapped in cloth so they glow like held fireflies. A father counts heads by touching them. A grandmother's hand trails off the gate-post like a goodbye. The night wind meets them on the plain road and presses them gently onward, away. Revelation 18 : 4

At the back of the little column there is a boy of about seven, bundle on his back, his hand in his mother's — and he looks back. The whole shining city swims in his eyes, towers and ten thousand windows doubled in two small dark mirrors. His mother feels the drag on her hand. She looks down, follows his gaze to all that glitter, then back to his lit, longing face. And gently, two fingers under his chin and not one hard word anywhere in it, she turns him forward. He blinks. He walks on. His hand tightens in hers. Revelation 18 : 4

A mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying, "Thus with violence will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down, and will be found no more at all." The cloud-floor bends under him — the strongest back in heaven, planted on the cloud-tops like a dockworker on a pier, holding a boulder the size of a hill. He lifts it over his head, and the night waits under it. Then the throw: one long arc, turning slowly against the stars, and a crown of water climbing the dark, soundless at that distance until the boom arrives like a door closing under the world. Out of it comes a single ring, crossing the black water with the unhurried certainty of arithmetic. Revelation 18 : 21

The light of a lamp will shine no more at all in you. The voice of the bridegroom and of the bride will be heard no more at all in you. Let her shine one last second — and then every window, every tower, every garden lantern goes out together, in one soundless instant, as if a single breath crossed the whole city and took the light with it. Nothing burns. Nothing cries. What is left is a crown-shaped silhouette against the night, dust rolling quietly down the avenues, one banner falling from a black tower — and, over the gates, four jeweled words catching a last glint of starlight before they give up the argument. Revelation 18 : 23

The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her, will stand far away for the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning… "For in an hour such great riches are made desolate." On the ridge above the plain the caravans have stopped, and the kings and merchants of the earth stand in their fine robes with the camels kneeling and the cargo going nowhere. Jeweled fingers work over each other, over and over. One of them lifts a lamp toward the dark as if light could refute it, and lowers it again. They keep their distance. Watch what they are actually grieving: not a city. A market. Revelation 18 : 15, 17

After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, "Hallelujah! Salvation, power, and glory belong to our God." And heaven lets go. Not gloating — released: the sound of a universe watching cruelty end forever, joy with tears standing in it. Arms go up in one motion like a white sea cresting. Two old kings hold on to each other and cry into each other's beards, and a small child throws both hands up and laughs. Nobody here is glad about Babylon. Everybody here is glad about after Babylon. Revelation 19 : 1, 6

"Let us rejoice and be exceedingly glad… For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready." It was given to her that she would array herself in bright, pure, fine linen: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Bolts of shining cloth come out and go streaming overhead down the avenues of the crowd, hand to hand, laughter chasing along their length — heaven setting its own table. Then the tables themselves: boards of solid glow reaching to every horizon, and the faithful who waited longest being walked to their seats first. A hand on a shoulder here. A bow and a gesture there. Room, finally, for absolutely everyone. Revelation 19 : 7–8

He said to me, "Write, 'Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.'" He said to me, "These are true words of God." A shining messenger lands beside the old man at the edge of the feast-grounds, straightens, composes himself into the proper solemnity of heaven's couriers — and then the smile breaks through anyway, like sun through a shutter, and he surrenders to it completely. John is already fumbling for his pen, laughing and weeping at the same time. A laugh shakes one word crooked and he underlines it anyway. It is the happiest dictation in the whole book. Revelation 19 : 9

On the headland at Patmos the pages are weighted under stones, and the boy writing them has stopped with his pen hovering. A wedding? Teacher — the world is ending. Who plans a wedding at the end of the world? The old man laughs, the low sure laugh of someone quoting the answer from the inside. Heaven does, boy. A beat, and the huge eyes come round, shining. The world does not end like a lamp burning out. It ends like a bride hearing the music start. And Prochorus grins, and writes faster than he has ever written in his life. Revelation 19 : 7