Tim: Autumn
Place: The Cave of Prometheus
A VOICE
The cave is empty,
Prometheus seldom comes;
He seldom rests or works or sleeps,
For day and night the Storyteller sings,
And they wander here and there
Shedding their praise of fire
Till every crevice of the wind is filled
And the air clogged with song.
ANOTHER VOICE
They used to sing
Only when their solid minds
Were shocked with colour by the evening light
Or the light of morning;
But now the song runs wild
Through day and night,
Because one time it ceased
And there was discord.
ANOTHER VOICE
It was the too great swiftness of the song
Wrenching its delicate web that made the discord,
And now there is no count of day or night.
ANOTHER VOICE
No coloured light
Comes in the morning or the evening,
But the grey deepens
And night comes quietly,
And the grey lightens
And day creeps in;
Sometimes the rain falls;
The grey sky floats again in the grey rocks;
The leaves come from the trees,
Snapt by the wind,
Or dropping slowly
One by one in the mist.
ANOTHER VOICE
Through the mist or the wind
Prometheus goes;
He has become obedient as the moon;
And warmth and cold
Have grown the same,
And dark and light;
He is as tame
As a long dark night
That makes its way towards dawn.
ANOTHER VOICE
Rhythm has caught him; he’s tangled
Like the seasons that turn and turn,
And the stars that must dance till they crumble.
ANOTHER VOICE
The air grows heavier carrying the song;
Its weight impedes our eyelids and our breath.
SEVERAL VOICES
What is it?
A cloud –
A sound –
A flying light –
A warmth –
A touch like fur –
Dim shapes of words –
Swans’ wings –
A swarm of bees,
Or water –
A great wave,
Or the sea –
Quick, quick, the cave.
A VOICE
Prometheus running,
Chased by some wild beast;
His face is queer,
His hair is like cropped grass;
His legs and arms
Like stalks of Autumn fern.
ANOTHER VOICE
A grey shape follows him –
More grey than the air –
Less grey than a whirl of dust or sand –
So insubstantial that it gives with the breeze;
They’ve reached the far dark corner of the cave.
CHORUS OF VOICES
It feels as if a stone
Dropped slowly in a well;
As it falls the well grows dark
And the water cold;
The stone takes long to fall,
The well is deep;
The stone has reached
The bottom of the well,
And lies at rest
Unheeding dark and cold.
End of Part IV
