4 よん

Ode to future time

Time, you beckon. Before
you were
perfect space,
open prairie.
Today
you are
a thread, a drop,
a slender light
scurrying like a hare toward thickets
of concave night.

But
now
you’re telling me, time, what
you didn’t tell me before.

Go ahead, get going,
give your heart a rest.
Go ahead and sing your song.

I’m still the same, aren’t I? The one
who knows the river
by the way its water flows?

All I know is this; in that very place
my heart has been knocking
at a single
door,
knocking since yesterday, from afar,
since long ago,
since my birth-

that place
where the dark echo
of the singing
sea
answers, and I sing,
an echo
I only
Know
By its blind hissing,
By lightning
Striking the waves,
By waves’ thick froth in the night.

And so, time,
you’ve seized me up in vain.
In vain have you hurried
to stay a step ahead
of this wanderer.

I spent the entire night
by a single door.
I was alone, and singing.

And now
while your light thins
like a speeding animal
fading into shadow,
only now do you tell me
plainly
what you didn’t show me
but I’ve always known.