Category Archives: time

What is night will soon be day.

humor, poetry, time, ,

Ogden Nash makes me rejoice in the English language as it presents itself to his peculiar, playful mind. I liked this galloping poem, and won’t argue with it, because that’s not what humor is for. But I will say that the line I chose for the title of my post led me from laughing to silent theologizing…

TIME MARCHES ON

You ask me, brothers, why I flinch.
Well, I will tell you, inch by inch.
Is it not proper cause for fright
That what is day will soon be night?
Evenings I flinch the selfsame way,
For what is night will soon be day.
At five o’clock it chills my gore
Simply to know it isn’t four.
How Sunday into Monday melts!
And every month is something else.
If Summer on the ladder lingers,
Autumn tramples upon her fingers,
Fleeing before the jostling train
Of Winter, and Spring, and Summer again.
Year swallows year and licks its lips,
Then down the gullet of next year slips.
We chip at time with clocks and watches;
We flee him in love and double scotches;
Even as we scatter in alarm
He marches with us, arm in arm;
Though while we sleep, he forward rides,
Yet when we wake, he’s at our sides.
Let men walk straight or let them err,
He never leaves them as they were.
While ladies draw their stockings on
The ladies they were are up and gone.
I pen my lines, I finish, I scan them,
I’m not the poet who began them.
Each moment Time, the lord of changers,
Stuffs our skins with ephemeral strangers.
Good heavens, how remote from me
The billion people I used to be!
Flinch with me, brothers, why not flinch,
Shirts caught in the eternal winch?
Come, let us flinch till Time stands still;
Although I do not think he will.
Hark, brothers, to the dismal proof:
The seconds spattering on the roof!

-Ogden Nash

Heads rocking and tick-tocking.

poetry, time, travel,

My Kate is arriving by airliner tonight with her family, and I am imagining the little boys with their out-of-sync bodies debarking at a time when they would normally be in their beds asleep. This poem captures some of the sensory confusion of the experience of flying. (‘Kliegs’ are powerful arc lamps used in film lighting.)

TOUCHDOWN

The great airliner has been filled
all night with a huge sibilance
which would rhyme with FORTH
but now it banks, lets sunrise
in in freak lemon Kliegs,
onto swift cement, and throws out
its hurricane of air anchors.
Soon we’ll all be standing
encumbered and forbidding in the aisles
till the heads of those farthest forward
start rocking side to side, leaving,
and that will spread back:
we’ll all start swaying along as
people do on planks but not on streets,
our heads tick-tocking with times
that are wrong everywhere.

-Les Murray

 

On this morning’s wing.

church, poetry, time, , ,

This day being the Church New Year, it seems good to imagine ourselves as pilgrims setting off across an ocean of calendar days stretching away in the distance far out of sight. Each date is a commemoration of people and events that still impart God’s love and providence to us, “whatever storms or floods are threatening.” Each rotation of the sun is a reference point on our life’s journey, and I’m glad for the chance to be in church on this feast of the First One; our parish will be singing the hymn of thanksgiving, “Glory to God for All Things.” 

THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES

He calls us all to step aboard his ship,
Take the adventure on this morning’s wing,
Raise sail with him, launch out into the deep,
Whatever storms or floods are threatening.
If faith gives way to doubt, or love to fear,
Then, as on Galilee, we’ll rouse the Lord,
For he is always with us and will hear
And make our peace with his creative Word,
Who made us, loved us, formed us and has set
All his beloved lovers in an ark;
Borne upwards by his Spirit, we will float
Above the rising waves, the falling dark,
As fellow pilgrims, driven towards that haven,

Where all will be redeemed, fulfilled, forgiven.

-Malcolm Guite

To reinvigorate our lives.

quotes, time, , , , , , , , , ,

bishop_mitrofan“It is noteworthy that Jesus chose to perform many of His miracles on Saturday, which was then the day set aside as a day of rest, and for contemplation of God. When Jesus was condemned for repeatedly healing on this day, He made it clear that God’s day was not to be wasted in idleness, but used for active celebrating by gathering to pray, doing good deeds, and for strengthening our souls. Sunday, the day of the resurrection, is not a day to spend sitting around the home mesmerized in front of the television or for going shopping; it is the day to go to church, to pray, and to reinvigorate our lives. Sunday is intended to be an active commemoration of the Lord.”

-Bishop of Boston Mitrophan