The Recoil Of Time

These nerves know all the ticking of seconds In your syncopated ecstasies, and this flesh knows When you've reached the edge, There's no going backwards again. This mind knows all the precise pinpricks Of patience, wherever you've veered to wander. But somehow, this world cannot disband Its crystalline self, before disbelieving eyes; Can never follow the ordered layers peeling away: Everything will still be as solid, as fragrant As vertiginous, restless in inhibition, Expressing the scaled continuum of resolute being, When your nerves are finally stilled, And your flesh is growing already colder. But my unruly mind will no longer grasp then Its footprints in carefully metered seconds; But only in the leaping of frayed centuries, in aqueducts; The rivers racing forward, into blind uncharted distance Yet undreamed of, hidden under moonless nights; Forests folded under the weight of eons, suddenly registered, Calamities sped up to meet the counterpoint Of time's new frowning dissonance; And how quickly the wood begins to warp, The rusted gallows to peek through, all the torn tapestries weaving.