IF THERE WERE STILL TIME, BUT IT IS LATE

 

 

IF THERE WERE STILL TIME, BUT IT IS LATE

(For all the Old Friends)

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

"Clearly, the parable speaks of the patience of God. Both saints and sinners populate the land, but no one gets judged until the very end. Everyone has the time and opportunity to, as it were, convert from weed to wheat (even as, in the case of the good seeds, the possibility to change from wheat to weed likewise remains). Who was it who said that, because of His decision to wait for man to come back to Him, God created time? Then time should have as icon, not the clock or hourglass, but God waiting outside the door." ANYONE THERE?---Simeon Dumdum, Jr., “Anyone There?” FB Notes July 19, 2014

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
07-20-14 Mississauga