48 Time poems

time will wash away so clean not a cry will be left in it

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea?

Like the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last, Was Time long past. There were sweet dreams in the night Of Time long past: And, was it sadness or delight, Each day a shadow onward cast Which made us wish it yet might last— That Time long past. There is regret, almost remorse, For Time long past. 'Tis like a child's belovèd corse A father watches, till at last Beauty is like remembrance, cast From Time long past.

Now is before he was born. Days of air shaken by bees, crow song probing eaves and quays. Maker of the future a perfect terra-cotta tense, a tense which sings. The absence of push in his education was unpresaged by the door’s lack of wired Sesame. He waits and waits for egress. The door needs only his touch. Its only desire is to swing. He waits for it to open itself, as the cloud opens for the melting press of the sun. He is ready to rot where he leans, leaving a breeze-blown blemish long after he has arrived. Long before he has come into being.

Time is crying upon the backs of lizards, Through the white stone of the medieval city They dash. The houses that are walking up the stairs, Flowers out of ruins, Further into the fortress, The sounds of a language registers In our dreams. Words which are my hat in the city, Coming through the bamboo The shadows of lost meaning— Tilted light making slivers Through the forest of the mambo Behind the eyes. Time will shine your head into skull The circle song will come again and again, If we forget how to lay out a village, Just open a guayaba in half, These seeds are perfect, And can guide you back, Your hands the electric of the ghosts. In the Persia of shining alfombras, A belly button silks upon a horse, Enters a tent of rhythms, Makes the trees dance into shape, Rubén Darío saw them in the river, Bathing in the echoes of the castles, His Indio head, Clean enough to measure The tempo of a camel, The first string that vibrated The Rock of Gibraltar, To sway Greco-Roman lips, Arising fire of Gypsy song, Was making Castile dress and undress, With the sounds that were hitting the moon And falling down unto earth as colors. Of boats that were my shoes. Atlantic chachachá. Splicing through 101st Street brick. Which covered dancing verdure green Rectangular mangos, Cylindric bananas Sounds in the sky blue tropic: mind. Trees are making maracas That will soon make you dance. Water is their god of cadence, As I sea walk through coconut heights, Legs of tamarind, Purple orchids arranged like syllables, Insects of the morning dew sting verses on café. In embroidery of Italians, Garcilaso came to José Martí, Who ducked Spanish spies In Manhattan And hugged Walt Whitman’s beard in Philadelphia As the Cuban Habaneras’ Shango Made it south to tango. Boats are ages sailing on water, Parrots are flying out of castanets, Flamenco peeling pineapples That go up the river, The water that became El Quijote’s language, As a cane field disappears into a bottle, To awake in a little town With molasses orbiting the cathedral, A wooden saint slicing through the Mountain full of potassium radiation, Slanted plátanos pointing into medieval Liturgy, Bongo and ocean waves carving Phantasmal antiquity Through the fabulous language That has taken the shape of An Andalusian rhyming door, One after the other. Perfume pagano Sailing out of the archways, As Ricardo Ray turns into a centipede, Marching across a Brooklyn piano, For dancers to Sanskrit their Gypsy feet, Upon Albaicín ceramic tile. Caribbean sun melts the caramel, Making our first national flag: White skirts waving  in the air. Machetes taking off like helicopters Chopping off branches for timbale sticks, The hands of the sun hitting the Moon like a drum— Making the atmosphere of moisture Heat up, For the chorus of the song To come back down upon us polinizando The carnival flower, A serenade walkilipiando. Sliding upon seashells, That disappear into the foam of time, One age living next to another, We are both living things at once, We are the cadaver that is About to be born.

Uncessant Minutes, whil’st you move you tell The time that tells our life, which though it run Never so fast or farr, you’r new begun Short steps shall overtake; for though life well May scape his own Account, it shall not yours, You are Death’s Auditors, that both divide And summ what ere that life inspir’d endures Past a beginning, and through you we bide The doom of Fate, whose unrecall’d Decree You date, bring, execute; making what’s new Ill and good, old, for as we die in you, You die in Time, Time in Eternity.

For John Thornton Fellow fugitive Forgive yourself And me thereby Thus we can live Whatever’s left Of time for us, Each day a gift We take on trust

Then it was always for now, later for later. And then years of now passed, and it grew later and later. Trapped in the shrinking chocolate box the confused sardine was unhappy. It leapt, and banged its head again. And afterward they said shall we repeat the experiment. And it said later for that.

When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory; Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay To change your day of youth to sullied night; And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-liv'd Phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one more heinous crime: O, carve not with the hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen! Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong My love shall in my verse ever live young.