Past is past;
We can never know time.
Time is only memory,
A previous life stretched,
Calibrated in artifice,
Checked by rusting chains.
Dylan, who measured time —
Time that let him play and be —
In lamb-white days,
Knew too well that time’s constraints
Would hold him green and dying.
We created our mythology of time
To index our simple lives, but
Time is life past and life to come
And our petty measures
Can only frame our misered view
As we, heedless, dance ever forward
Beneath the blue-framed sun
And a myriad stars in a naked sky
Which retain a myriad alien times.
Future is future.
A time like any other.
