Time. . .

Being neither good  nor bad, swift nor slow,
time passes. . .
Simply being what it is. . .  Time.

No matter the qualities attributed to it,
time cares not to be friend or foe,
helpful or hindering;
passing as it does over,
under, around
and through us;
unseeing and unseen.

And this it does,
regardless of any and all efforts to clock it,
worship it, suppress it,
ignore it, use it or abuse it.

It frustrates our need to analyse it,
encompass it,
relegate it, consume it.
Whilst ignoring our neurotic cravings  
to control it, manage it,
equate it, subjugate it.

And though we try to buy,
rent or sell time - to stop it, watch it,
conserve it... all is for naught.

Though we take “time off”
or try to “make good time” or think
we make "good use of time" . . .
All is irrelevant. All is in vain . . . and vain?

For time ignores the existence
of all things, all plans, all beings.
It is its own void. . . and not,
It is its own reality, enamoured of nothing more
than its own virtual existence;
master of its own creation,
evolution and potential,
denial or disappearance.

The “times” we hold dear are not
as they pass unsympathetically,
unceremoniously, unemotionally,
even as our fantasies concoct warm memories of their passing. . .

Moreover, we do not,
though we think we do,
“have” time.
It is not ours to hold,
nor ours to tell.

Time is amoral.
It communicates with no one and,
even as we speak of it,
it shamelessly ignores us.
Neither  acknowledging
our quaking demise
nor giving value
to life’s quivering breaths,
it cares not
whether we are or are not.
Have been or ever will be.

To live
is to pass through time
as it passes through us. . .
To exist is to worry over it
but to never “know” it;
just of it.

And through all of this,
Time will always be
that most famous of accused:  
the source of our ineptitude,
our fears of solitude, our griefs and angst
and paranoias.

Yet, how can we blame time
when we fail to see it
for what it has always been
and forever will be...
nothing more than the figuration
of conceptually timing
the gradual disintegration
of our every atom
as it, in turn, effaces itself,
diminishes itself, negates itself
from the very essence of its passage,
and ours . . .

Time is but a figment of our imaginings. . .
an enigma which never pretends to be
nor has it ever promoted itself to be
anything more than what it is :
timeless.


Bernard Poulin - (1966 - edited 1982)