Don’t ask me how time is spent

A poem

After José Emilio Pacheco,

‘No me preguntes cómo pasa el tiempo.’

I can’t feel Time pulling the earth;

the plates from last night’s dinner

seem intact — on the table,

the sugar still dissolving in a cup of tea.

I don’t feel Time walking

with the rush-hour crowd,

stepping on my feet, waiting

for an opening to get

past me.

Time doesn’t hit like a drum,

or twelve soft-belled sounds,

it’s not short nor long Morse code,

Time’s a junkyard gypsy

trying to puzzle our fates together.

Perhaps in an ill-gotten epiphany

the Future is Time’s taciturn muse,

whispering chance into his ear, a voice

that turns into a steady heartbeat.

I don’t believe I’ll ever quite

feel it passing by me,

like night cars on the side of the road,

moving among my past lives,

a light that has already been spent,

a house of spirits behind the fog.