time - poetry dealing with the personification of time and its rule over mankind by stephen richard...

8/6/2019 Time - poetry dealing with the personification of Time and its rule over mankind by Stephen Richard Eng

1/60

Time

Easy Lover

No one ever stops the seasons,

No one made of flesh and bone,No one tells you half the reasons:

Better learn them on your own.

Life is like an easy lover,Loyal till its time to leave;

Later, when youre thinking of her,

Take a little time to grieve.

Treat her like a lady through

Clear and cloudy years:Even if shes cheated you,

Thank her for her time and tears.

Life is like an easy lover,

No one tells you what shes for:

Just as soon as you discover,

Love her, when she cries for more.07-28-68

*


2/60

Badland Ballad

The sun is scarleting the land,Bloodying a dead

And skull-encrusted sea of land,

Once an ocean bed.

Another visitor to see

Fossils all around

Another order soon to beBleaching on the ground.

Instead of everlasting bliss,

Only yawning doubt,Till even Gods afraid that His

Time has trickled out.12-23-68

*


3/60

Fifty Years

At the ancient burying-ground,Spirits overhead

Hover happily around

Gardens of the dead.

Nightly living lovers come

Quiet to that place,

All the phantoms flutter fromThere without a trace.

Lovers take and use the night,

Gone before the dawnLeaves a mourning-wreath of light

On the marbled lawn.

Lovers leave before the black

Sky returns to blue:

Fifty years, and theyll be backThere as spirits too.

06-20-70

*


4/60

Foreseen

The gates of Time yawn back,

And let the seas of black

Rushing tidal wavesTurn cities into graves.

Atlantis went before,

And soon our southern shoreHelps the Ages keep

Their promise with the Deep.

02-18-72

*


5/60

Law

The fruit of life is sweet,Juicy, till you meet

The apple underneath,

Acid, to your teeth.

And danger, at the core,

Eternal worms will bore,

Following Times lawEvermore to gnaw.

07-30-72

*


6/60

Dream Dust

Beyond the plains

of Yet-To-Be

Hills of EvermoreAre towered, tall above the sea

Splashing Times sad shore.

And yet the sands of What-I-HadBlow and storm my brain

And batter me with golden glad

Sands of youth in vain.

For sand is sad and ever dry,

Bleaching out my dreamsBeneath a parching, white-hot sky,

Where my pale skull gleams.

09-30-72

*


7/60

Flying Dutchman

Time is not a hearse,

Its just a ship

Bearing your best verseOn one long trip.

07-01-73

*


8/60

Last

Beyond a blue-green sea

Of mere mortality,

Impassioned poets strive to standImplanted on firm sand.

But even those who climb

Toward Timelessness, from Time,Eventually see their fragile gift

Succumb, when shorelines shift.

At least the poems lastWhen kingdoms all are past,

And rust is on the crown:At least theyre last to drown.

08-11-73

*


9/60

Embrace

Time is a loyal lover,

Hugging you to death,

Lingering to hoverTill your final breath.

Never mind her madness,

Misery and miles,Kiss away her sadness,

Memorize her smiles.

08-21-73

*


10/60

Last Spark

A little while is allYou have really got

Before your fortunes fall,

And your teeth will rot.

Youre old enough to see

Youve lost ears and eyes;

Youre young enough to beBitter that Life dies.

The sun cant melt the snow

Coloring your hair,But still you feel the glow

Like a distant flare.

And so the burning blinds

You to Time and truth;

Youre yearning in your mindsFlickering lost youth.

01-19-74

*


11/60

Etchings

Years arrive and leave,

Winters roll and weave

Lines around your eyesMaking you look wise.

Wise enough to know

Every wind to blowLeaves its time and trace

Furrowed in your face.

Lines of love and grief,Hate and disbelief,

Rage, and loyalty,On your face to see.

02-18-74

*


12/60

Beyond

No cause for petty fearing

When all your years run out:

Eternity is nearing,Soon killing death and doubt.

Eternal Life--His giving--

Infused from Enfleshed God--Transforming now our living,

So travel where He trod.

02-26-1974 (Rev. 11-11-1990)

*


13/60

Brothers

Times a tyrant, locking youIn a dungeon, your life through-

Only love or death can free

You of Times sure slavery.

Love and death are brothers in

Fights with Time that they can win-

Both are sweeter, sadder, thanTimes brute bondage over man.

04-25-74

*


14/60

Liberation

The prison of Pride is an iron cage,

And it fetters your heart like chain,

As you look out on life with smug disdainAnd everyone. Never opening

Your soul so it can sing.

The prison of Hate is a cell of rageWhere you bang on the bars within,

With imagined rebuffs that pierce thin skin:

You never forgive, never call a truce

Your angers like a noose.

The prison of Time enslaves with age,Where you pine for what cant be:

But the only sure way youll struggle free

Is step out and leave behind

All bars that wall your mind.07-30-74

*


15/60

Barbed Wire Ballad

Rusted wire against a treeYear by year recedes

Inside of the circling bark, invisibly

Consumed. Relentlessly, the oak tree feeds.

The countless rings of outer bark

Enwrap the wire within.

Thus Time is absorbing me. I markThe circles choking me. Im taut, stretched thin.

10-07-74

*


16/60

Cosmic Thunder

Perhaps the last few leaves of Time

Are dropping off the Lotus Tree,

Our little earth will gasp its lastAnd soon be swallowed up in sea.

Then sea and earth divide and part,

Each half dissolve without a trace,Twin flames that rush with lightning speed,

Disintegrating into space.

We may be sitting on a kegOf atoms that will soon explode

And little else of us be leftSave ash along the flaming road.

And when we think ourselves secure,

We may be standing on the brinkOf chasms gorged with blood and fire,

Abysms blacker yet than ink.

It may be while we sleep or wake

The world will end, a crash will come,

With cleavage of the earth and sea,And thunder of the Cosmic Drum.

1974

*


17/60

Curtain (Finale)

Stand away

From the play

Titled Life:Scenes are cut

From your gut

By Times knife.

Stand aside,

Let the wide

Stage collapse.

Stand apart,Let your heart

Die, perhaps.

Stand alone

Like a bone

Bleaching dry.Deaths your scene,

Played between

Sand and sky.01-05-75

*


18/60

Feeding Place

Vultures in a ringCircle yesterday

Swooping down to bring

Up their dying prey:Love that died away.

Love that Time had slain

On the desert sand:Well-picked bones remain

As the vulture-band

Forages loves land.

02-20-75*


19/60

Forever

The centuries wind byOn historys grim sky

Bloody red with stars,

And armies for all timeEnact the ancient ritual crime

Worshipping of Mars.

Ten thousand years agoTomorrowor todaywe know

Everythings the savage same,

With Armageddon, Calvary, and

Auschwitz, each eternallyFiring us with shame.

04-15-75*


20/60

And Blind

Times never slow,

Minutes, they goTicking fast,

Floating, they flow

Toward the past.

Seconds, they fall

Over Times wall

Into Then,Deaf to the call

Of Nows men.

09-28-75

*


21/60

Ghosts

Old lace and cut glass,Antiques of dull brass:

Dim dining room.

Lockets with hair-coils,Portraits in old oils,

Cracked spinning loom

Paint peeling, tall weeds,

House where old Time feeds,And the years gloom.

08-08-76

*


22/60

Glow!

Grandchildrenmirrors of you

Decades ago,Long before fickle Time blew

Your hair with snow.

Grandchildren chatter and play

Time disappears

And their golden hair complements grey

Lighting your years.11-10-76

*


23/60

Grave Proof

Art: loyalist, longest,

Kindest, strongest

Friend Ill know.

Art: enemy of Time,

Living when Im

Clay below.

Time: enemy of flesh, hair

Bones and teeth, where

Worms but thrive.

Songs: stronger than headstonesOver bleak bones:

Songs survive.

12-11-76

*


24/60

Harvest

Squeeze the apple dryToss the withered core

Down before

Apple-days all die.

Apple-time is fled,

Like your younger days.

Time obeysNothing you have said.

Trees are stripped and bare

Of fruit that you once knew;Autumn blew

Away on hungry air.1976

*


25/60

Knife-Thirst

Time is a rusted bladeRipping when it cuts

Bone, and fat and guts.

Life is a tragic clowns charade

Times nicked knife will slash;

Props, and back-drops, crash.

Only proud puppets never fade:

Sawdust hearts survive,

Deathless, unalive.

01-26-77*


26/60

Love Snare

Time is a ribbon of silver threadSpun by the spider, Space,

Cob-webbing Mans bewildered face,

Snarling his dense, doomed head.

Love is the only sure weapon Man

Wields against the net

Time has woven and tautly set,Sword it as best you can.

03-77


27/60

Dinner

Time is the vampire that sucks the years dry,

Love is the maiden to die;Time is the ghoul and your life is the meal

Rich with a gourmet appeal.

Curtains of purple are shredded with rot,

After the banquet, youve got

Nothing but age and the end of your love;

Time-vultures circle above.04-02-77

*


28/60

Love Death

One more dreamy dawn,Lazy as a yawn,

Colors me with you:

Orange, and pastel blue.

Miles and months of Time,

Green as gin-and-lime

In a tall, cool glass:Even eons pass.

Twilight turns to pink,

Dying sun will sinkDown inside the trees:

Dreams of you all freeze.05-14-77

*


29/60

Antique

The curio shopWhere no one will stop,

Lives in its yesterday-dust;

A grandfathers clock,An earthenware crock,

And Times faintest aroma of must.

The brass button trays,The bright feather sprays,

Languish like lovers ignored.

The years are for sale,

The bargains all fail,And Time shuffles by, looking bored.

09-27-77*


30/60

Growing Young

Autumn eyesFace new skies;

Ancient ears

Deaf to fears!

Grief is sin,

So you grin

At a childTime has smiled.

10-31-77

*


31/60

Graveyard Verse Verities

I.

Raven, yew and cypress treeAre emblems of mortality,

Embalmed in woodcuts on each page

Of poems from the Gothic age.

II.

Modern poets sense of gloom

Is fear of life, not of the tomb:That dread which comes when reason rules

But later, churchyards sleep such fools.1977

*


32/60

Luray

Water seeping through the ground,Forming limestone, timeless round

Pillars on the ceilings, or

Columns on the cavern floor.

There, where bats escape the sun,

Nature carves, till Time is done,

Castles in Virginia caves,Like Egyptian, carved-stone graves.

07-22-78

*


33/60

Clock

How should I measure the turns of time?In raindrops, tears or kisses?

In wrinkles, rages, blisses?

How should I count these seasons Im

Surviving, beyond number?

By snow-by sun-by thunder?

Perhaps to clock them is a crime,

Instead Ill sing their going,

Their coming-and their flowing.

03-21-79*


34/60

Knell

Love is but a seconds tickRecorded by the cruel clock of Time.

Hear those meshing gears revolve and click!

And listenfor Loves final chime.06-16-79

*


35/60

Cacophony

Now of this and that I hear:Time and Timeless memory,

Dawn of the ages, ages old.

Birdsong in the morning mists,Silver strains of swirling spheres,

Time-begotten, Time-bequeathed;

Twilight, end of the centuries,

Violence, Time-dishonoring,Raucous notes that rend the air

From an orchestra gone mad.

1979

*


36/60

Echo

I hear a howling of Infinity(A million billion worth of years),

My ears

Reverberating the immensityOf spatial, blue-black void that spans

A multiverse that dwarfs this earthen speck of Mans.

1979

*


37/60

George Sterling

(1869-1926)

His verse was wrought to decorate,

Embellish, glow, and shed the greatImmortal light of some far flagrant sun

That flares when Time itself is done.

1979

*


38/60

Immortality

We live forever, or almost;As long as stone may last,

Engraved with mottoes, carved to boast

Our passing and our past.

We last as long as stone survives,

Encrusted with green scales;

We last beyond our little livesAs long as stone prevails.

01-25-80

*


39/60

Farewell, Lyrista

The split in the walls of TimeWidens, and you walk through

Corridors, eons, new

Why cant I come with you?

Up towering heights you climb

Seeking infinity

Far, in a sky-black seaLeft here on Earth is me.

And you hear the centuries chime,

Caroling, one by one,Tolling our times, now done:

Hope that is leftis none.

For now that youve vanished, Im

Pining in this bleak place,

Dreaming about your faceLostuntracedin Space.

03-02-80

*


40/60

Lost

How many years alot themselvesTo fairies, sprites and elves?

The fewest number, flying fast

For childhood flutters past.

Enchanted realms when you were small

Capitulate and fall;

Their palace guards of inch-high menSeek graves in days of Then.

10-25-80 (rev. 1990)

*


41/60

Galactic Gothic

The Age of ManIs but a brief, abbreviated span

Of seconds ticking in a moments course.

Infinity: the final sourceIs like a charnel house, with cypress tree

And yew and myrtle, growing in the graves of Space,

Where decomposes Times own face.

12-80*


42/60

Lost, Lost

The twists of tiring Time exhaust me,Enervated with endured despair,

Regretting how I sought and lost the

Rose mirage of a rainbow, some far Where.

The happy Elfland horns that hallooed

Are silent now, to ears of age.

And Little People (and their dreams I followed)Sadly vanish under Times turned page.

01-28-81

*


43/60

Clock(2)

Forty summers, forty springsYou concentrate on brighter things.

Then forty autumns, forty cold

Decembersand youre growing old.03-17-81

*


44/60

Approaching Hour

When the fickle tick of Time

Intensifies, then Im

Aware of countless minutes past.And wonder: when the clock

Explodes its final tock,

Will I look foolish at the last,

UnreadyGodlessand aghast?04-05-81

*


45/60

Anachronize

Spit contempt at Time.Write rhyme,

Though rhyme is obsolete

And brings a doomed defeat.

Dance a jig in place

With grace,

To meters measured beat,For freedom lies in shackles to poetic feet.

05-04-81

*


46/60

In Memory of Thomas Lovell Beddoes

(1803-1849)

(for Neal S. Baron)

Yes, Deaths the goal from birth,

From womb to worms-in-earth,The distance but a seconds crazing race.

Run well, run slack, the finish line, your coffin space.

Yes, Deaths the favored theme(Mere Life, a tinsel dream)

Chill Earth is real. Charade of livings not.

In time, your silk-lined sleeping-box will rot.

1981*


47/60

Lifes Fleeting Day

I.

When the morning expands with a platinum smile,Horizon-wide, beaming grin,

And the meadow extends, emerald mile upon mile,

The anthems of sunrise begin!

The diamond-dewed day suffices a glow

Roseate on the blue,

While sleepy-eyed people, stirring below,

In renascence, waken anew.

II.

Afternoon is the chapter of life at its close,

As shadows obtrude on your mind,

And lavender twilight turns purple the rose,And blackens until you are blind.

The dusk hour descends till its shrouding your eyes,And earth is shoveled in place,

Your eyelids now closed, as existence subsides,

And clods carpet over your face.1981

*


48/60

Country Farmhouse

No building long survives Times hurricane,It scatters shingles, rends each roof

And bares the rafters to the rain,

The skeleton of walls stands proofThat nothing fashioned by mere Man endures aloof.

01-82

*


49/60

Frost Dirge

You scatter songs upon the breeze

Of August, casting all

Your lyrics and your May-time melodiesAway, before Fall

Descends with desolating pall.

You hear your tunes on autumn gales,In banshee-echoed sound

Of late November. Music wails

In mockery as storm-gusts pound.

Your summer chords cannot be found.

The dirge of winter-time completesOblivion of all youve sung.

December weathers wind defeats

Your muse. With ice, your lyre is hung,

Its frost-snapped strings unstrung.

Your sleet-bejeweled Deaths head strives to sing

Through Time-clenched teeth. But no notes ring.1982

*


50/60

Graveyard Verse Verities (2)

(for A. Langley Searles)

I.

The raven, yew and cypress, eachReminded Man of deaths long reach,

Two hundred years ago: a page

Of wood-cuts from the Gothic age.

II.

Today, the poets sense of gloom

Is fear of life, not of the tomb;And shrouds of existential dread

Enshadow Mans dank crypt: his head.04-14-83

*


51/60

Devouring Yesterdays

We grind up centuries between our teeth.We gulp the decades down,

Digesting eras with a self-pleased smile.

We spit out months that taste too green,

But chew up years all brown,

And swallow ripened seasons served in style.

At Times vast feast millennia are spread

For banqueting: we glutton gods are fed.

05-18-83

*


52/60

Lured by the Looking Glass

Im running backwards down the hall of years,Beseeching Time to halt. Time turns deaf ears.

I race down corridors in quest of you,

In vain, in vain. Echoes mock anew,Reverberating in the tunnel of my dreams

Loves playback of my heart-recorded screams.

On cold, metallic walls I press a kiss,Then realize their surfaces are glass

Reflections, nothing more. And as I pass,

Their fun-house images distort and bend.

While down loves labyrinth I blindly wend.1983

*


53/60

And I Never Got Over You and Me

I missed the last few class reunions,Youve been to one; theyre all the same;

I shut my eyes and see those yearbook faces

That silly heart you drew around my name.

Growing up for some means growing older

Ive traveled light, Ive traveled far

But out there on that lifetime highwaySometimes you find exactly who you are:

And I never, never, never got over you and me.

Hate to see how you have changed, for God knows time

Has left its lines on me.Growing old but still I cant outgrow remembering

What we said wed be, you and me.

Ive traveled continents and oceans,Ive slept in palaces and cheap hotels,

Ive danced with ladies of a foreign language,

But all Ive really learned is what time tells:

And I never, never, never got over you and me.

02-04-84*


54/60

Immortal Bouquet

The withered arm of Time has plucked the blooms

That crowned the brow of Love and rent the ringOf roses round Loves head. Decay consumes

The petals. Powdered grey flecks everything.

Thus shorn of blossoms, Loves skull drawsIts scalp in wrinkles that retract

And tighten. The first of all Times laws

Would seem the last as well: the fatal fact

That life means death. Yet death becomes rebirth:Loves phantom sheds its flesh and rides the sky.

Below, its skeleton sinks deep in earth,

The gnarled old arm of Time grasps high

But cannot seize the cloud as it enclosesIn silken mistgold-ruby roses.

08-06-85*


55/60

Carpe Diem

Your life is like a briefElusive, wind-blown leaf

Upon the gales of March. So seize

And clutch it captive from Times breeze.

But leaves are hard to hold

In autumns coming cold;

Before they powder in your hand(Right through your fingers, like fine sand)

Enwreathe them in a floral band.

12-29-86

*


56/60

Extermination

I stand indifferent to rat-nosed Time who gnaws,I stride oblivious to Times laws,

His ravenous, remorseless years assault.

The rats teeth sink. Then halt.

My leg withstands, impervious to fangs of Time.

Acknowledging that rodent is a crime.

The vermin soon is mashed beneath my heelTo grease. Therehearken to his squeal.

1987

*


57/60

Bliss (2)

The kiss of Time corrodes

Bronze Venuses to flaking rust,

Times transitoriness erodesMarble aphrodites down to dust.

But Loves caress slays Time.

Eternities succumb to Loves soft sigh.And nuptial church bells ever chime:

Gods clarion echo heard on high.

09-29-88

*


58/60

Gold Songs

Dreams are coins you toss,Sweet loss,

Gambled young or old,

Fools gold.

Dreams are songs unheard,

Sounds blurred

Like fragile, tinkling chimes,By Times.

1988

*


59/60

Historys Horse-Hooves

Historys horse-hooves are clattering by,

Cobblestones ring with sound,

Dinning our frightened earsOver the futures ground,

Signaling coming years.

But hooves trample you and me.

Damned history.1988

*


60/60

time - poetry dealing with the personification of time and its rule over mankind by stephen richard...

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