It Is Later Than
You Think:
i\bigail to
~inerva
Save us,
0
save us, cries Abigail to Minerva:
Do you see what time it is
On the clock's face, full moon half-risen in July,
Bells chiming? Look at time, Minerva,
0
come In from
the tomb,
That orchard where the apple tree's last century
Now blooms underground,
its dry roots spreading
Across the graveyard whose only flower is thin grass
Of lost New Milford.
I am here on the top stair
Holding the banister to keep from falling.
Come, come to me, Minerva, before the clock strikes,
Before we dissolve in night wind, the pure darkness that has
no name.
Do not wait now until I call no more,
Until the voice itself is gone, when hands lose hold on oak,
When stays in calico no longer hold weak body.
Is that your footstep at the door?
Is your hand raised to knock, have you come quietly
As you once did as a child, deceiving me, stealing the young
heart
Out of my clumsy flesh, perfect cool fingers closing over the
rich heart?
My body trembling,
my lips saying: "No, this is not my
sister,
This gold-haired girl, whose pale skin is delight,
Clear water in crystal as the noon sun shines through it,
She is not my sister", but someone seen
As a vision in a noon-tide dream, naked and faintly smiling,
Small hand of love extended from thin arm,
The bare feet scarcely pressing grass
And love's hand offering new-picked buttercups.
Come, come, 0 come, Minerva, both of us must be here
To meet this hour in an old empty house
Where the clock strikes everywhere, even between its walls,
Through coverlet, through pillow: "One, two; one, two"
As though distant owls called us awake to tell us the actual
dream had fled:
That we could not return to what we were
In the old orchard on a summer noon,
There, quite alone, locked in each other's arms in prayer;
That a third face had slipped between us
And a third pair of eyes looked down
From heaven unmoving, piercing sun's rays at noon,
Entering even the darkness of the night that has no moon.
If I were calling someone who had no name, she would
come sooner, Minerva!
16
If my voice were a voice without words,
Would you hear me calling, calling as a bird calls
After the trap has sprung and will call again
After he has been set free, knowing the cage
IS
always
there,
Even in the topmost branches of the tallest elm?
Would you hear me then, Minerva,
would you know the
voice was I,
A tired woman, who has lived fifty years too long
Beyond noon when we met and from that hour had no
need of love?
This white house is no longer white, but gray rain-beaten,
Difficult to see at night unless the lamp
Is lit at kitchen window or the moon carries our iron
Cock-crowing weather vane across her face.
Do not step from the path, Minerva,
clear road between
our hearts,
Sun-lit, moon-lit, for the orchard grass
Uncut so long conceals the treacherous dead grape vme,
apple root,
Rose brier, rusty scythe and the half-dug pit that was to be
a
grave.
Come to the door, say without words through faintly smiling
lips:
"Yes, we have lived too long and there is danger every-
where"
Because the clock's hands move across the full moon's face,
Because Grandfather Colby died before the hour struck,
And the whole town knew the clock was slow,
Retarding time that I could not set right:
Loss of a million hours in our blood.
I heard him scream in the same voice that I call now:
"It's late, it's very late"
And after him banks closed, crops failed,
And the workman starved like varnished rats between fac-
tory walls
And the food store failed.
"It's late", he said, "will someone break the clock that's
always late!"
Come to me, child Minerva,
like the child Christ
In a vision to his dying mother,
Thorn-free and body whole, the cross forgotten,
Eyes wide and beautiful, forever piercing death.
Come, come, Minerva, close the door softly as I no longer
wait,
Feeling the earth downplunging in darkness, sink in deeper
earth,
I sayiJ;lg quietly: "It is very late;
It is later than you think."
HORACE GREGORY
OCTOBER,
1936
