Who made time provided also
Its Fools, strapped in Watches—²
We throw our watches off the roof to
Cast ballots for an Eternity Outside Time!³
Time is a ship on a Merciless sea—
Drifting toward an Abyss of nothingness
Until it can be Recharted for its own Destiny.⁴
Words weigh the least, death weighs most,
Time weighs Nothing at all—but I can’t bear it—⁵
Time Teaches us to wail & blink, to walk alone,
Stare, question, wonder, give the world a Name,
Forget the watery darkness from whence we came.⁶
Those who make a close study of life believe that
Under the surface—is a pillar of Motionless Time.⁷
Time splits its husk, pours its riches—and falls like
Shells, shavings from a plane: hard, white, imperishable,
Words fly to attach themselves to their places in
An Immortal Ode to Time.⁸
Time is not to be trifled with, whether as
A medium of Advancement & Prosperity
In this world or Preparation for the next—⁹
Do not lose time on daily Trivialities—
Do not dwell on petty detail: for these things
Melt away in the obscure traffic of time.¹⁰
¹ John Ashbery, Hotel Lautréamont
² W.S. Merwin, A Scale in May
³ Allen Ginsberg, Howl
⁴ Umar Bin Hassan, Time
⁵ Li-Young Li, Changing Places in the Fire
⁶ Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sonnet
⁷ Mary Ruefle, Grasshopper
⁸ Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
⁹ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful
¹⁰ Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow