And thoughts pass through one and another,
Interchange. Rest and return, eternity is
Rest and return. These waves aver that time
Is revealed as real as everything, as never
Nothing, but as far less than what we once
Thought of, not so long ago, as the totality
Of change. Time is only a comfortable kind,
Sub specie aeternitas, of change, the kind
In which the indivisible unity of the ongoing,
That which is, in all its points and waves,
Partial sameness as partial change, remains:
Cycles, beats, pulsations, when the same
Part is in the change, a regularity, a return,
A sacred periodicity of days and seasons,
Lunar phases, years, any one pulsing pattern
Or combination of the same, including all
Our rammed-earth, baked-brick, tilted-rock,
Pyramidal, monumental platforms, temples,
And observatories of heavenly lights dancing
Past to return, those and every subsequent
Invention of clocks or calendars. Calendars,
Some have said, could be read as meant
First to separate the time that is the sacred,
Is the observed-and-then-awaited return,
From all the rest, the intervals of the dull,
The not-holy, mundane and thus profane.
In this sense, in the sense of being sacred,
Time is the eternal, time the circular mirror
We hold and mist over in hopes of a glimpse
Of eternity caught in night’s clockface. Time
Is not wholly change. We cannot subdivide
The holy small enough to catch it just at rest
Or to isolate pure change. Purity approaches
The holy, but never enters into the presence
Because every approach to purity is shame.
What are we saying? Time the sacred lives
In the deepest waters of this dragonish lake,
In the quivering lights that go out, never
To return, as much as in the winking sunlight
On the tips of these waves we watch today,
Or in the bits of moonlight we’ll see tonight,
Or in reflected electric lights blinking on, out,
Whatever keeps coming at us, which seems
To be the same light returning, but is never it
Returning, just more light pouring through us
To the dark palace, light never resting, never
Pure, never wholly different, never the same,
Woven with time, with rhythm, and also with
Random change, the timeless and untamed.
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