IF THERE WERE STILL TIME, BUT IT IS LATE

Painting by Salvador Dali

IF THERE WERE STILL TIME, BUT IT IS LATE

There will be time, there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;/…And time yet for a hundred indecisions…---T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

1. It’s not too Late

It is not too late, there is still time.
Time enough to start all over again?

Time enough to peel off rotten edges,
Look new as cankered limbs, hearts

Of darkness lit by flickering starlight.
There will be time, and time to save

Even this hapless piece of wriggling
Worm, this man, this shadow of life

Creeping into sunlit shelters where
Crawling is de rigueur for the tenant

Of this place, this earth, this hole
From whose depths we late emerge

From shall so soon expire to claim
An orbit among the rent remains

Of body and soul and his illusions
Of immortality, his undying atoms.

2. It Might be Late

In what world will we find happiness
Again? In what place, a fresh start?

Like that moldy sweet potato left
In a crisper, there must still be a way

To save it for an evening’s repast
When this hunger gnaws no limits

In this suspected late night diner
And one orders something sweet,

Something filling while we wait
For brighter mornings in this desert.

But if that morning will not come.
What is there to save but saving?

It will be late then. Who will require
Bright days, cloudless skies, or joy?

3. All Will Be Late

When Time equals Being,
That would be the End.

Nothing would get past
The edges of ephemera.

What would the end be,
When Being equals Time?

There will not be a bang
Anywhere, nor a whimper.

There can only be trumpets
Of the winged proclaiming

An arrival in a regained
Haven where Death is dead;

At which time, no time
Marks being on time. Ever.

All will be late for the birth
Of God on Judgment Day.


---ALBERT B. CASUGA
07-20-13 Mississauga