Cecil, Part 2

Five: In which Cecil learns some things about somethings
The magician had heavy dark brows and a silver specked pointed beard, overshadowed by deep-set china blue eyes. When Cecil entered his tent he was sitting at his desk in the glow of the oil lamp. Before he knew what he saying, Cecil blurted out,
“Is it real? The magic? What is it?”
The older man smiled in his eyes, though Cecil barely caught it.
“What is real?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But the magic, it felt—”
“—real?”
“Yes. It was so beautiful, it must be true.”
“That is dangerous ground to tread, young man.”
“I have to know. May I stay with the circus? I cannot ever understand more if I stay in the town. There’s nothing there like magic.”
“Perhaps if you had eyes to see it you would see it there. You may stay for a time, and we will see what you learn to see. If you are asking if the magic you witnessed in the giraffe was an allusion, then the answer is no, it was real. If you are asking if the magic can be empirically proved, then no, it is not real. But it is something. It is.”
“I don’t quite understand. It does not exist in the physical world. It is other, it is spiritual—”
“—Poetic, perhaps, is a helpful way to think about it.”
“But Poetry is merely words strung together well.”
“Poetry is not merely anything. A poet is more than just a wordsmith, but a magician moving powers beyond what the eye can see in order to teach the senses their own limitation.”
“It’s all so strange. All you say would be superstition in the town, but the poetry you speak of is in the very air of the circus.”
“The circus is a mockery of the empirical real the townspeople cling to. But it only mocks in order to present things that are more real. In some way the painted tear on the cheek of a clown is more real than the manipulative tears of a spoiled child. That is enough conversation for tonight. You will see more clearly in the light of morning after a nice sleep.”