Back to The Gods index
Previous poem
ON A MOMENT IN TIME
In time - the beat
blocks time in discrete
chunks like the bits
blinking at us out
from our computer screens,
like the quantum jump, like the frames
in a roll of film,
like the numerals
of infinitesimal
calculus - these do not turn
space into time, they invent -
oh how necessary -
what never was and never will be
(as I stare fixedly
at you in a photograph
standing in front of me)
that great door that Nietzsche saw
or the longing Spengler says
all animal life endures
to stop - to live
the life -
the tick tick ticking -
of a clock.
[The 'great door that Nietzsche saw' refers to Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part Three: 'Of the vision and the riddle' - 'The name of the gateway is written above it: "Moment"'. The reference to Spengler is to the beautiful opening passage of the 2nd volume of The Decline of the West.]