With all our lives set out on either hand:
the past in mists receding - future hid.
What is this life of ours but a fruitless dream,
A hand in the dark that grasps a moonbeam,
An endless journey without stop or stay?
Nothing exists but continuity - which stays
A golden chain that links the hours and days,
the shinning, thread of life that Clotho spins.
Life lives in the labyrinth of memory and dreams;
Each thought however real or passing seems
Is but the echo of a distant sigh.
Existence is in all the time through which we live
But presence which we to each instant give
Abides not long enough - to say, "I'm here."
To God all of time is now;
To us as no time at all.
More firmly held than ropes or chains can bind;
More surely than by bars encompassed round.
The tree puts forth its buds, the brown leaves fall,
Time's wheel turns, eternal revolution;
For time is change, mutation, and decay.
The seasons' cycle, changing, always the same.
Yet time does not return, but ripple like
Spreads undulating to infinity.
Death pierces time, children torn from the womb,
We' plunge in to the unknowable void,
And all the things that lie beyond our dreams.
Time moves quicker than we can understand;
The seconds like flashes of lightening pass
And as the cliffs the years crumble away.
Inevitable, inexorable.
Who can halt time's swift approach?
Or make one second's space endurable?
But now I am,
And so forever,
Forever.
So it is with you,
But not the same,
We are separate,
Isolate.
I do not know you;
You know not me.
Why am I not you? Nor you I?
What is this barrier
Like the cell wall,
That keeps us apart,
Inviolate.
We are like snowflakes,
Thousand, thousands,
All are different,
Yet alike.
Individuals,
Lone and lonely,
whom no-one ever
Understands.
