Time: the First Mover’s fatal instrument

Fleet to avoid all stasis, room in which to think,

Wanders a world commanding, commandeering

Mustering squadroned minutes spelt as numbers indolently

Then that full-brother, glad-hand-thief, devourer, Fate

Struts like a reiver scouring on a plain, no ample way

Approves his barbarous manner bringing consternations

Wrought like a hanging moon prefiguring changeability

Weighted with failings sure we wayfare merry acolytes

Follow our thinking men; tails after, bark at harpies

Shadowy things in hock behind, are filing crocodile

Inglorious teeth turned outwards; savage, ravening,

Their spare forms in front go two by two; drear Fallen Angels

Louring with anger, bustling-busy, musing in their chains

Recreant missional deadlights beckoning swing the favoured schema

Possets of liquorice blabber-offerings at their hands

Hinged in-between conflicted Man hangs, ghostlike, prayer-suspended

One traffic leaves him, a next besets: which way? for either stand

Strands him aground, beaching, becalms him; presciently

No country or Continuing City tends this shore

What permanent obeisance serves them carapace

What consolation comforts them?: the twisted knee

Bent under, this way that, perplexed of alteration

Caught up, hung lifeless, like a fairground doll’s?

Time, old Creation’s first-born, maker of our nature

Double: sets hear a passive past, and future figures blind

Enclosured the present straitly meshed, fear freights us

With thoroughfares unsignposted declares not where to go

A meet rebuttal squares injunction, expunges generously

Wild riot of tongue, compunction; parlous fractures turn-about

That undoing of impermanence whose empty road disturbs us:

Come, to go eastwards, Christian, seeks the fragrant garden:

Here dearer pith shows excellence, and fruits in touch with root,

Truth is a palm’s leaves’ genuflection, a homily of great proof,

Outside the term of Time’s estate, Fate wallows without rostrum:

“The time is fulfilled; and the Kingdom of God comes near at hand”