The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  As broken and contorted

  He lies in spasm,

  Writhing in the dirt,

  My momentum hurtles

  On before its sable shield

  Bearing a silver queen

  And a kneeling knight;

  I follow erect and

  Expressionless, to receive

  A shyly given favour;

  While others wait to vie

  For nothing more than

  A fair maid and a gerfalcon.

  Hugo Bonvilian leaned back in his hickory button-tufted swivel chair, and ideated the sky through the ceiling. In the creation of his poem he had purged himself of jealousy, and it no longer mattered who had tilted at whom: he had no rival, and the result of the joust meant nothing to him.

  As to the meteorites, he had no fear of the Jovian force behind them; and, now that the end of the world was imminent, he was no more going to quail in a craven bunker than he was deliver himself into the hands of those who hated him, to be lynched. He neither understood his unpopularity, nor saw any reason to take his defeat personally and fall on his sword, Brutus-like at Philippi.

  He had never regarded the innocents who passed through Ward One as enemies, or taken pleasure in torturing them. He had merely used them as experimental material in the greatest of all scientific causes; and instead of being vilified, he thought that he deserved people’s thanks and understanding for having pursued a solution with single-minded devotion, to the exclusion of having a life of his own.

  Desperate times require desperate measures, and now the time for them was over it was enough that he would share the common fate.

  He picked up the pen again. As the Word had begun it all, so the Word would end it, and the Giver deserved to be thanked even as he took His gift away. “Vanitas vanitatum, dixit Ecclesiastes; “vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas.”

  The hand was steady, the writing assured, and the lines that Hugo Bonvilian had absorbed long ago, from a single reading aloud from the Good Book by his mother, rolled forth, transformed into psalmic paraphrase

  Like a tree by the water-side

  You planted me where I reside:

  I did not question the reason;

  I will bring forth my fruit in due season.

  As I have certain precious things

  I keep hidden beneath my wings,

  In turn I hope that I may lie

  Treasured as the apple of your eye.

  One day perhaps I will see your face:

  Till then you are wrapped in a place

  Of secrets and oblivion;

  Dark water round a dark pavilion.

  At dawn the sun comes from his room,

  Ebulliently like a bridegroom,

  To tell us how rich we can be

  If we are in your sweet company.

  I cry during the day; you take

  No notice of my nights awake;

  You lit the candle of my heart

  But now it burns low and melts apart.

  Dogs and men have surrounded me;

  My soul cries for delivery

  From the wicked; I am forlorn,

  Threatened by lion and unicorn.

  Those who once loved me hang aloof;

  To my neighbours I am a reproof;

  My friends fear me; to relatives

  I am part of them that no longer lives,

  A broken vessel; but my heart

  Is hot and I feel the fire start

  To kindle; and somewhere among

  My confusion I have found my tongue.

  My heart shall not turn back on the way;

  My steps are not about to stray

  Even in this shadow of death;

  Even when threatened by dragons’ breath.

  My tongue is a ready pen that writes

  Good matter that my heart indites

  Of parables that bent my ear;

  My harp plays dark words for you to hear:

  King’s daughter, gladdened with glory

  In palaces of ivory,

  Clothed in wrought gold, infused with myrrh,

  And mixed with aloes and cassia;

  Purge me with hyssop; make me clean;

  Wash me whiter than a snow-scene;

  You broke my bones, but now your voice

  Of joy and gladness makes them rejoice

  With those bright words that betoken

  Happiness; words that were spoken

  As confidently as the sun

  Rises in the world to make its run.

  I often think how much I would love

  To fly: to have wings like a dove;

  To take me far away; to flee

  Into the wilderness; to be free.

  But there is nowhere that you cannot look;

  Nothing you do not note in your book;

  You have bottled every tear I shed;

  Every flitting, you know where I head.

  The only safety that I know

  Is with you under the shadow

  Of your wings: I know I can last

  There hidden until this tyranny is past;

  Until the streets are clear again;

  Until another time is come

  When the dogs of darkness no longer go

  Grinning through the city, to and fro.

  Whose power is so great that he

  Builds mountains for eternity?

  Who stills the raging of the sea

  And cures the people’s insanity?:

  The same who sends soft drops of rain

  In little valleys on the plain,

  And blesses the furrows of earth

  And wilderness places that give birth.

  The folds will be full of sheep, and

  The little hills and valleys stand

  So thick with corn that they resound

  As they sing and laugh and dance around.

  Though you slept among pots and pans

  You will fly up on silver spans

  Like the covert feathers of a dove

  Wings that golden high above.

  You have taken captivity

  Captive, and given enmity

  A chance to soften and uplift

  Itself: you brought this heavenly gift.

  Men who hate me have made a mire

  Where I am stuck fast and will soon tire

  And sink without delivery

  Where the waters will run over me.

  Do not let me drown; save me from death!

  Do not let the floods cut off my breath!

  Do not let the deep waters swallow

  Me here where you alone may follow.

  The desire to enter your court

  Consumes my soul and every thought;

  To find a house is nothing more

  Than any nesting sparrow seeks for.

  There is nothing that I would not be

  Or would not do in your house gladly,

  If only you would grant me access

  Far from these tents of ungodliness.

  For a thousand years in your sight

  Pass by as a watch in the night;

  They are as sleep or yesterday

  As soon as you scatter them away.

  My days are gone like the shadow

  Of a flower in the meadow.

  The days of man die down like grass;

  They suddenly fade and quickly pass.

  In the morning I grew up green

  And was delighted to be seen;

  By evening I was cut; alone;

  I dried and withered where I was mown.

  Let all the oceans lose their poise

  And clap their hands and make a noise;

  Let the fields and hills and trees all shout

  And turn our own joyful world about.

  Now I rejoice that I was born;

  I am exalted like the horn

  Of a unicorn bathed in oil;

  Nothing can ever make me recoil.

  It is so long since I was a child;

 
I am a pelican in the wild;

  Or a desert owl; or a roof-

  top sparrow all aloof.

  Now I eat ashes for my bread

  And drink the tears that I have shed.

  The wind still blows where I used to be

  But the place does not remember me.

  Who else would know how to invoke

  The heavens around me like a cloak,

  And ride the wind effortlessly

  In a chariot over the sea?

  Deliver me, for I am weak;

  My heart is hurt, I cannot speak;

  I am one you should never know,

  Hidden in smoke, a parting shadow.

  Unless you protect my house;

  Unless you are there to douse

  The flames; unless you are there

  To guard me, I have wasted my care.

  Rising early and working late;

  The careful food upon my plate;

  The extra effort that I make

  To be successful: I need to take

  More interest in myself than this

  Or I am surely going to miss

  My life. My most important choice

  Is asking you to hear my voice.

  You shall not see pride upon my face;

  I like to think I know my place;

  I never try and turn my hand

  To things I do not understand.

  They asked me for a melody:

  I hung my harp upon a tree;

  How could my mind instruct my hand

  To sing and play in a strange land?

  You know my thoughts before I think;

  You know when I rise up, and when I sink;

  You are always with me, everywhere;

  If I am in hell you follow me there.

  You will search me out and know me

  Even in the outermost sea.

  If I take the wings of morning

  You bring into my darkness, dawning

  After he had put down the fountain pen and blotted the final lines, there came a knock at the door, which, before he could speak or answer it, opened. A man entered, and Bonvilian felt a twinge of excitement.

  It was Laszlo 9013J, Superintendent of the Exeat Institute, and the person who made the winding of the clock in the tower his private business.

  ‘You!’, said Bonvilian, getting up. ‘The Exeat Institute…of course, the former Greenwich Hospital! I should have known. I used to watch you from my window. I could have had you fired, or worse. A lot worse. Things could have been so different…couldn’t they?’

  Laszlo laughed. ‘In the words of Ian Richardson as Michael Dobbs’ Prime Minister Francis Urquhart, “You might think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.” But now the tables are turned.’

  ‘Is it all over then?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Why the personal call, Father Time?’

  ‘I still have a little of myself on my hands, before things are wrapped up, so I thought I’d drop by.’

  ‘Sort of, happened to be in the neighbourhood?’

  ‘The oldest part of me never likes to stray far from the Meridian, so this is for Auld Lang Syne. And though we’ve never met, you know me as well as anyone. Do you not?’

  ‘Of course. You are Chronos, son of Uranus and Gaia the earth goddess. Assisted by the Titans, you castrated your father with a flint sickle, married your sister Rhea, and ate all your children; except Zeus, the youngest, because Rhea tricked you into swallowing a stone instead. Zeus later made you vomit up your brothers and sisters, and sent you into exile. Although you lost your power amongst the gods, you remained a god of fertility and the harvest.

  ‘You are also believed to have been the model for Father Christmas, who loves children and gives…gave…presents to those of them who behaved well.’

  ‘Note that I haven’t brought you one.’

  ‘Your being here at all is gift enough. Something to remember you by.’

  ‘Such wit, in your last moments, is to be commended.’

  ‘So, how long have we got, Old Father Time?’

  ‘You don’t need me to tell you that.’

  ‘My watch is in for repair, payment on collection.’

  ‘Quite the comedian these days, aren’t we?’ Laszlo raised an eyebrow at the digital calendar clock on the wall behind Bonvilian’s desk. ‘I mean that. It must be new.’

  ‘I put it up this morning. Punctuality is a virtue.’

  ‘More of a fact, at this point, but I’ll take that as a compliment. It’s touching, too, to see a framed picture of myself in a place of prominence.’

  ‘The time, is it accurate?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve a couple of hours and a bit until seventeen minutes past four and twelve seconds, when everything comes to an end. How would you like, Hugo Bonvilian, to fill the time remaining? I don’t mind spending it with you, for as much as we’ve been entwined in each other’s affairs, we’ve never had an opportunity to talk. It’s up to me where I hold the Last Rites, and it might as well be here.’

  ‘You are kind. Is there anything I can do to make up for lost Time? Specifically, could you...’

  ‘No.’

  Bonvilian, who had been holding his breath pending an answer to the most important thing in the world to him, felt his heart shrivel.

  ‘Sorry, Hugo. Personal relationships, as you just observed, aren’t my strength...what remains of it, for I am very tired.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, there doesn’t seem much else left to...’

  ‘You were writing something before I came in. Something that made mention of…sheep.’

  ‘Sheep?’

  ‘Yes: “He...who filled the folds with sheep,” you wrote. More fully, in The Book of Psalms, “He who sent soft drops of rain into the valleys and onto the plain; who blessed the furrows of earth and caused the wilderness to give birth; who filled the folds with sheep, and made the hills and vales so thick with corn that they resounded with song and laughter.”

  ‘And once, early in your career, you described Time as being a sheep of the imagination.’

  ‘What if I did?’

  ‘When did you last see one...a sheep?’

  ‘As a schoolboy. A flock was being driven to pasture across a lane that I was bicycling along, and I had to wait. You?’

  ‘It was in the Age of Naivety. I use the word in its original sense of “artless”, from the Latin nativus. They were a special kind of sheep: simple, pure, ingenuous. If you like, I will tell you about them.’

  ‘Certainly, thank you. I’d like that very much.’ Bonvilian motioned his visitor to the one comfortable chair, which had a view through the window to the clock tower; but Laszlo moved it to face the desk, sat with a sigh, and stretched out his legs.

  Bonvilian resumed his own seat. ‘There’s a confession I’d like to make to you, Father Time, if I may, before you start.’

  ‘Of course. What is it?’

  ‘Simply that it was always life I was afraid of…life, not death.’

  ‘Though absolution is not in my power, nor the imposition of penance, I’m honoured that you would make it to me. Still waters run deep, Hugo.’

  Bonvilian tilted back his chair. ‘And now that I’ve got all the Time in the world, in you, at my disposal…please proceed.’

  Laszlo’s eyes became opaque. ‘Publius Virgilius Maro…Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid begins: “I sing of arms and the man...”. But this is not the Aeneid, or Homer. So I will opt for a softer: “Inspire me now, O Muse, as of sheep I sing.”