There is no contending with time

Time, when passed, is difficult to face

It is worse than the bandit

Worse than the insolent spawn of the rabble.

It can not be stared down, intimidated, humiliated,

It sneaks up on you, in your sweetest slumber

When your eye is shut and your heart is in a vault

When you, in primordial oblivion, wallow in self-ignorance.

In filthy innocence like a fish in polluted water

Like a sleeping seed, which has produced no wheat

A dormant pyramid, unaware of the dusty millennia

Gathering sand and roughness upon its magnificent flanks.

You might emerge from the subterranean cave

Like a chthonic god surprised that its temple is gone

Swept away by time, by the creeping of a new soul

Heralding an irreverent zeitgeist.

And then, eyelids heavy with Hadean sleep

You welcome the sunlight into your skull

Unfolding, slowly, like a wet flower

A child of nature, raised by nymphs.

But woe to man, woe to man!

Time, with its cart and oxen, has ploughed the horizon!

In its rude sun-barge, it has upturned the mile-stones

As indifferent as that goddess of salt and wind, Katarina

Pulling all, pushing all, into the upward spiral of the Unknown.

Stand up, soldier, have you been sleeping on your watch?!

Come to attention;  acknowledge your superiors

Woe to you, solider, for the court martial is without mercy

And the gallows are near.

Where have the sun-months gone,

Where have the moon-months gone?

Where, my dear, have gone all those seconds

Slipping silently through the sand clock embrasure.

Counting your breaths

In, out, inhale, exhale

The labor of everyday is the labor of an aeon

And time, oh sweet time, has passed.

Time has passed, my dear, time has passed

And with its passing left you in the past

Retroverted, backward, straggling

Abandoned, left-behind, overtaken.

Where the harvest has been collected

You still plough the earth

Where the wheat is now bread

You still separate the chaff.

Woe to me, brothers and sisters

Dearest siblings and blood-kin

Tender ancestors whose breath begot us

Though mother earth has now swallowed their limbs.

Gone, dearest friend, gone

Are those days of sweet venison

Those winds, those impetuous gales

Screaming with Dionysiac joy.

Deep in a tar pit, up to your neck

The lips of the pit insurmountable

Deep, deep down, in black tar you stand

Forgotten, forlorn, hardly awake.

Like the figures of Pompeii

Entombed in sleep

Time has eaten, and has drunk

Over your weary body.

But the cocoon cracks, dear God

The savior is near

With golden wings, with a thousand sparks

A fresh-winged butterfly emerges.

And what is this world for, dear man?

Beyond its rims, what lies?

Can a giant truly jump over its borders?

And then lie at peace in empty space?

A telescope shows but a pinpoint of space

No single mind can gather infinity

But a single field is part of the vast lowlands

And even infinity can divide.