In a little story poem called "From The Gray Legends."
You know the story that you've been
told in the mythology books.
Now, mythology does change all the time.
And this changes that story a little bit.
But it takes the same cast of characters,
with apology to the unions.
You know what I mean?
"From The Gray Legends" "Arachne wove the gray before daylight.
From beyond the scent--
from beyond the screen of fronds, before the birds,
before words, before the first stories, before voices.
Before Minerva's eyes were made of that same gray,
Arachne had her own beauty, seen or unseen.
And as she was older, she was already who she was.
Then it was day, and Minerva wove
in the daylight from daylight.
And she knew where the threads were
going in their stories, some of them, some of the time.
And she claimed that she always knew.
Arachne claimed nothing.
Arachne did not have to know.
She could wait, even when she was forgotten.
And she could wait to be forgotten.
Minerva kept seeing Arachne's weaving,
waiting in the daylight, with the daylight passing
through it.
The weaving reminded Minerva of something
she could not see there, that she could not remember.
Arachne's weaving, even where it was broken, was always perfect.
With a perfection that Minerva could not trace nor imitate.
Her own wisdom laughed at her, and she was angry.
What could she do to Arachne, who could
weave the gray before daylight?
She started the story about a contest between them,
which she won weaving daylight.
And then what could she do to Arachne
to obliterate her, to forget her as though she had never
existed?
All day in Minerva's own mind in her own weaving,
in her own dream, she could not imagine a way
to unmake Arachne.
All night, her own bird answered only, 'Who?'
The bird knew she could not change Arachne
into anything but Arachne.
In the gray before day, wherever Minerva's gray eyes turned,
she saw Arachne's weaving."