Poem: Time Forgets Itself

Time forgets itself.

It hears its humming between objects,

Fears its gestures;

Its inimicable inability to return.

Time fears itself:

Retreats sullen like a dog

Like a myth

Hidden within a cavity,

That space between the wall and the bookcase.

 

Time’s gestures cannot be seen,

Only its faint outlines in the damp corners of our homes,

In the fine lines of our hands.

It knows pain as it does affection –

Repetition as it does affliction;

A silent narrative

By which we measure decay, bodies burning.

The sighing witchcraft of modern material

And ancient Memory.

 

Time does not see me.

Blind bastard of history-

Not wise but childish.

 

It cannot see me nor wishes to see me.

 

Time is a cobweb, a string of steel;

A weaving, a structure that foreshadows

Death,

Hung up in the space between the wall and the bookcase.