It was 1964 when I first heard Pete Seeger sing Where Have All The Flowers Gone? I was 17 years-old and moved to tears. I told my mother, adding that I felt such a fool.
‘Never regret tears,’ she said. ‘Only fools never cry. It’s tears that oil the wheels of Time, and without Time there would be no way of carrying our memories to a safe place where we can access them whenever we feel the need…’
'That's daft,' I said.
'No, dear,' she said, 'that's history...'
Now I know better. As I grow old, I need to access my most precious memories; people, places, events that have had, and will always have, a special place in my life. My mother also spoke of a posthumous consciousness we can access at will, and feel close to those we have loved and since passed away...
This poem is a villanelle:
EXTRACTS FROM A TREATISE ON TIME
Where time, it passes us on,
we, too, pass on in time
like a flower, its season gone
No wintry world ever reborn
in love’s fair springtime
where time, it passes us on
Find peace on Earth forsworn,
(poetry forsaking rhyme)
like a flower, its season gone
Find all sacred songs written
(to give God a name…?)
where time, it passes us on
On its battlefields dearly won,
glory buries its crime
like a flower, its season gone
Whether molehill or mountain,
may the human spirit climb
where time, it passes us on...
like a flower, its season gone
Copyright R. N. Taber 2008; 2014
[Note: Regular readers may recall that an earlier version of this poem first appeared on the blog under the title 'An Autobiography of Time'.]
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