Time Eating by Keith Douglas (1920 - 1944)

heres a very English streak of gentility running through the poems of Keith Douglas (1920 - 1944) a young man alas who was never to be an old man who had gained more education than his alloted lifespan of just 24 years would seem to have made possible. Douglas like so many other of the war poets seemed to have lived his life with an urgency made all the more poignant by the dangers of seeing war and its ever present final result of sudden death first hand. This poem written by him in 1941 discusses how time has only one outcome to offer us as it takes us on a journey from the cradle to the grave.

Regards..

Jim Clark

All rights are reserved on this video sound recording copyright Jim Clark 2002 hyperbolelad@hotmail.com poetryreincarnations at youtube and vimeo

Time Eating

Ravenous time has flowers for his food at autumn---yet can cleverly make good each petal: devours animals and men but for ten dead he can create ten

If you enquire how secretly you've come to mansize from the bigness of a stone it will appear its his art made you rise so gradualy to your proper size

But while he makes he eats; the very part where he began, even the elusive heart Times ruminative tongue will wash and slow juice masticate all flesh

That volatile huge intestine holds material and abstract in its folds thought and ambition melt and even the world will alter, in that catholic curled belly

But time,who ate my love,you cannot make such another. You who can remake the lizards tale and the bright snakeskin cannot,cannot that you gobbled in too quick; and though you brought me from a boy you can make no more of me,only destroy.