Out of Time - Nov 14 2020

 

Out of Time

Nov 14 2020

The sweep of the second hand.

On some clocks

a smooth steady arc.

On others, a pause

on each small mark,

ratcheting through time

as if, for an instant

you could stop the world and get off,

let out a breath

and compose yourself.

But who decided on clockwise?

And who takes their time

so precisely

they need to count off the seconds

one by one?

There is something hypnotic

in the rock steady sweep

of its long thin wand,

so steadfast in its duty

and indifferent to our wants

it seems unstoppable;

impervious to our desire

to take a break from time

and nurse our private sorrows.

But the arrow of time

never hits the mark,

as the future keeps receding

and we never reach its promised land.

All the hypothetical futures

we imagine for ourselves

in the fullness of time.

And hardly as constant

as the second hand suggests,

interminably slow

when we're bored with life,

but faster and faster

as the end approaches.

When we will care less and less

about what's to come,

and care much more

about what we've done

or have not.

Because no one watches the clock

on their deathbed,

when the urgency of youth

is overcome by philosophy.

Time is meaningless

when it comes to eternity

and our own everlasting rest,

the second hand circling

and imperturbably circling

around and around again.

The poem starts by presuming that time is objective and absolute.

But it clearly isn't constant. Our perception of time depends on our state of mind, our state of flow, our emotional arousal. It also changes as we age: we are all familiar with how it seems to speed up the older we get. And with a degree of enlightenment, perhaps we're even capable of transcending time altogether: the dissolution of the boundaries of ego matched by a universal sense of serenely detached timelessness.

I wanted to capture the feeling of inexorability the sweep of the second hand imparts. But this same motion also conveys two competing ideas: the linear sense of unstoppable progress, alongside the cyclic sense of an endlessly repeating circle. So analogue clocks contain an inherent contradiction.

Nevertheless, most of us can't help but be oppressed by time. So look away, pull the plug, pop the batteries out. Mind over matter, I say. Stick a finger in its way, and make the second hand stop.