Time for Harvest

To the house of the Master 

I went

to surrender the harvest.

Wearing a conceited bowtie

the crow welcomed me at the entrance

and made me scrape life off of my boots.

Dead, but with clean boots

I stepped into the long corridor of canvassed faces.

And I walked, slowly

upon that never-ending carpet

that their fathers had laid over the bones of my fathers.

Once at the crossroads,

women’s laughter and spectral ladies

I saw passing through the walls.

It’s late, the crow cried

it’s late.

Because a feast was beginning at the Master’s house.

I could already hear the music and the steps of a mournful dance

denying the holiness of the night...

They hastily introduced me to the clock-room:

it was time to surrender.

I humbly lowered my head

just as I had been told to do on the day

when they’d stolen the words from my mouth and the joy from my heart.

But who was I kneeling to?

It was odd that during all those grey years

I had not realized

that there was no Master nor had there ever been one.

There were only two crows

inside the clock-room.

They looked frightened and ravenous,

victims and executioners of a game

that was as old as that house.

I looked at them.

They looked at me.

And it was then that I sang my black sermon,

a sermon full of pain and rage for the life that I had lost.

An instant later I heard the foundations creaking

and much pointless croaking.

Because the roof fell on the crows, on the clock, on the ladies

and on the rest of that bleak cathedral.

And I, I who had gone to surrender the harvest

went back home singing.

by J.R. Forbus