I heard her tell the story another way.
She set it, not in the village, where
the parish priest was telling the crowd
about light in the darkness
and the dawn of a new age--
she set it in the kitchen of their house,
with three women resting
and the day's work done. She told it
so we would listen for the music
of the room when i was still:
the rustle of the fire in the grate;
the single held note of a teaspoon
from which the knitting needles took their cue;
the steady flutter of the carriage clock
that kept their breath in check
one of them might sleep and her nodding glass
snag the firelight and scatter it
around the room to return in the more
familiar shine of cups on the dresser,
copper pans, her sister's wedding-band
in the village, a crowd of overcoated men
sent up a cheer for progress and prosperity
for all...
and in the length of time
it took to turn a switch and to make light
of their house, three women saw themselves
stranded in a room that was nothing like
their own, with pockmarked walls
and ceiling stains, its cobweb and its grime;
their house undone and silenced
by the clamour of new light
