time

We waited commonly for sleep or even death.
The instances were wearisome as ages.
But suddenly the wind's refreshing breath
Touched through the window the Holy Bible's pages:

An old man goes there - who's now all white-haired -
With rapid steps and merry eyes, alone,
He smiles to us, and often calls with hand,
And leaves us with a gait, that is well-known.

And suddenly we all, who watched the old man's track,
Well recognized just him who now lay before us,
And turning in a sudden rapture back,

The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold
Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:
They have forged our chains of being for good or ill;
And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.
Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong imperishable will--
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil--
Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.

Vibrations infinite of life in death,
As a star's travelling light survives its star!
So may we hold our lives, that when we are

The day I was happy,
Was the worst day of your life;
And you never thought it would come,
But it came after torment and strife.
The crowd gathered for nothing,
And the fake tears stained the wood.
I laid under this wood grinning,
Away from those who all stood.
All alone I may be,
But alone I have spent.
All this time to myself,
Gave me a chance to repent.
Maybe I’ll come back as a bird,
And sore up high.
Or maybe as a flower,
You smell as you pass by.
Or maybe as another being,

Thick overhead
clouds of the monsoon,
a delight to this feverish heart.
Season of rain,
season of uncontrolled whispers---the Dark One's returning!
O swollen heart,
O sky brimming with moisture---
tongued lightning first
and then thunder,
convulsive spatters of rain
and then wind, chasing the summertime heat.

Mira says: Dark One,
I've waited---
it's time to take my songs
into the street.

Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
   Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander'd all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

I charm thy life,
From the weapons of strife,
From stone and from wood,
From fire and from flood,
From the serpent’s tooth,
And the beast of blood.
From sickness I charm thee,
And time shall not harm thee;
But earth, which is mine,
Its fruits shall deny thee;
And water shall hear me,
And know thee and flee thee:
And the winds shall not touch thee
When they pass by thee,
And the dews shall not wet thee
When they fall nigh thee.
And thou shalt seek death,
To release thee, in vain;

. . . So I walked among the willows very quietly all night;
There was no moon at all, at all; no timid star alight;
There was no light at all, at all; I wint from tree to tree,
And I called him as his mother called, but he nivver answered me.

Oh I called him all the night-time, as I walked the wood alone;
And I listened and I listened, but I nivver heard a moan;
Then I found him at the dawnin', when the sorry sky was red:
I was lookin' for the livin', but I only found the dead.

Circa 1904 -- Done out of Boethius by Geoffrey Chaucer


Blessed was our first age and morning-time. Then were no
waies tarren, ne no cars numberen, but each followed his owne
playing-busyness to go about singly or by large interspaces,
for to leden his viage after his luste and layen under clene hedge.
Jungling there was not, nor the overtaking wheele, and all those
now cruel clarions were full-hushed and full-still. Then nobile
horses, lest they should make the chariots moveable to run by

O dandelion, rich and haughty,
King of village flowers!
Each day is coronation time,
You have no humble hours.
I like to see you bring a troop
To beat the blue-grass spears,
To scorn the lawn-mower that would be
Like fate's triumphant shears,
Your yellow heads are cut away,
It seems your reign is o'er.
By noon you raise a sea of stars
More golden than before.