XI (SESTINA)
There was a time each grain of time was
whole.
As is the tennis ball when hanging a
razor-sharp hundredth of a second, waiting
above the net. Not ‘recently’ or ‘soon’
but a third something, which is all we see.
The rest is expectation or is time
that was, not mine though, someone else’s time.
The clean shot is what once more makes you
whole.
This is the sole reality we see.
Expectations and memories fill a
mainly random personality, soon
for the next ball you can see it waiting.
Who is it though that stands there ready
waiting?
All time is eaten up by thoughts of time
that was, or something that will happen
soon.
Expectations and the rest memories. Whole
is only he who no longer sees a
second ball in the ball there is to see.
Such an event as that we really see
is more anonymous than we were waiting
for. Years and princes existing in a
past age seem to live in a stiffened time.
By name we make the broken vessel whole.
It’s borne with caution to a well that soon
seems deep and full of powerful voices.
Soon
only a lonely echo’s left – you see
the water’s gleaming mirror, which is
whole.
It lies down there below you waiting,
so inaccessible. It’s you. Your time
is brief. A single stone’s enough. And a
thousand splinters now glitter in a
well against whose grey-stone sides there
soon
play flickering reflections. Which are
time.
The only time we understand. We see
in splinters. In stiffened pose stand
waiting.
The clean shot is what once more makes you
whole.
We all live in a nameless world. We see.
We die as soon as we recall; die waiting.
