"In this revolt, the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie,"   Vaclav Havel.

 

FRUITLESS TOILE

(The fifth Quartet)

 

Time present lies!

That lie within; I live within the lie.

Time past, is a foreigner within a mac

pressing my back in effrontery

as I strap-hang from conception to inconceivable

on a train of experimental thought and light-pedantry.

Before me lies no after-life: termed future

until, prestidigitally, incrementally, it presents itself.

I attempt a stroll, taking tiny steps

and yet, they are too large to fit now

and must be, of necessity, pared, truncated, snipped

quantum-clipped to infinitessity.

Only then may I confront in perverse dual obversity

time-past, passively and future-perfect, perfectly.

For in this diminished existence

the better to fit my circumstance of zero-thickness

 I have brilliance to spare

as Strings of theory, incandescent in thwart

shine though my spectral insubstance

acknowledging thought that sticks the clever craw

and brings Stephen to hawking.

This asymptotic search offers no still point of reward

only finger-wagging, and points subtracted.

The cigarette paper you cannot slip

between my past, set in stone

and that mirror-image future

goes unsmoked as bacon;

infinitely thin.

Upon me there’s a yen to sing

were I afforded oxygen and inhalation.

But either expansiveness is, here, unheard of

as all of atmosphere is nought-dimensional

and every sphere departed, for others more congenial.

I would buy a pet; perhaps a cat

and a patented “Schrödinger Litter Tray”.

But the litter tray to my dismay

is half past – by Einstein’s clock

and half future, where the cat’s not been.

Then, should I accommodatingly stand it on edge

the granules would find no gravity

(far too weak a force to force in here)

quite absent – not unlike McCavity.

But lawlessness cannot be resolved just like that

as that particular cat, you well know

needs space; and that’s denied me

in the dimension-free paradoxical now

that suffuses my cavity.

So raise a glass when time presses

and, on reflection, illuminate the now

as simply the past meeting the future

exactly where – you are . . . . . . not.

A notional time line has no cross-section.

 Do not put too fine a point on it

for that would be, the

VERY END.