Pictures
From the Year of My Birth
Dec 6 2013
These were pictures from the year of my birth.
They are in black and white.
They show a simpler time.
They are a foreign country,
where I'm told I once lived
but find hard to believe.
And simpler, only
because this is how memory serves.
For most of time
there was no shock of the new.
But more to the point
These were pictures from the year of my birth.
They are in black and white.
They show a simpler time.
They are a foreign country,
where I'm told I once lived
but find hard to believe.
And simpler, only
because this is how memory serves.
For most of time
there was no shock of the new.
But more to the point
no photographs
and no need to go back,
because in the span of a single life
nothing much changed.
A man died
in the very same world
in which he was born.
Never felt useless, or old,
that things had passed him by.
Never felt angst
at the future of mankind;
or for the sanity of his own
daughters and sons,
running so fast to keep up.
To have lived
in the 2nd half of the 20th century
is to be desensitized
to exponential change.
To inhabit
some futuristic tomorrowland,
yet feel exactly the same
as a hunter-gatherer
on the Serengeti,
the newborn child
in that old-fashioned bassinette.
As I write this
the world has temporarily stopped.
A clock ticks
the wind chimes,
and the room is warmed
by incandescent light,
steadily brightening
as dusk imperceptibly falls.
The fleeting present
held barely at rest
for as long as I hold this pen;
my focus, intense
on the half-filled page.
As if the empty space
were already written,
and I, a stenographer
and no need to go back,
because in the span of a single life
nothing much changed.
A man died
in the very same world
in which he was born.
Never felt useless, or old,
that things had passed him by.
Never felt angst
at the future of mankind;
or for the sanity of his own
daughters and sons,
running so fast to keep up.
To have lived
in the 2nd half of the 20th century
is to be desensitized
to exponential change.
To inhabit
some futuristic tomorrowland,
yet feel exactly the same
as a hunter-gatherer
on the Serengeti,
the newborn child
in that old-fashioned bassinette.
As I write this
the world has temporarily stopped.
A clock ticks
the wind chimes,
and the room is warmed
by incandescent light,
steadily brightening
as dusk imperceptibly falls.
The fleeting present
held barely at rest
for as long as I hold this pen;
my focus, intense
on the half-filled page.
As if the empty space
were already written,
and I, a stenographer
dutifully taking dictation.
Should I snap a picture
to remember this by?
Or let my words stand;
the passage of time, not
nearly as fast
in ink on paper
black on white.
This poem is all about too rapid change, the conceit of "presentism",
and how nothing essential really changes at all.
It's also about the process of creativity: what is often called "flow", in which writing feels more like channelling, and in which process is so immersive it annihilates all perception of time. So the poem plays with time on both a conceptual and personal level.
In the deep past, there was no such thing as history, no need for concepts like past and future. Life was cyclic, and the stress of exponential change non-existent. But our modern world view is of linear time, and belief in progress the water in which we swim. I think much of this is a superficial conceit, where technology and speed and cosmetic newness distract us from the more abiding and important foundational truths.
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