The Ancient Modern
Step Outside / Joshua Alan Sturgill
Pour the Sahara grain by grain
through the eye of an hourglass,
the Pacific in a trickling stream
over paddles of a millwheel
until time has deconstructed
every star, and drawn the universe
back to its former singularity.
Then might we know: is time
a residue of motion? or measure
made by Consciousness?
When the silver veil is lifted
from the Face of Being
will time itself be taken up
and put to other use — the way
we figure space with lines
or square the frames for doors
and windows — time, a straightedge
for the untimed architecture
of another life? I step outside
to watch the Moon arrest
the orbit of the earth; to watch
the Sun expend his store of hydrogen.
I ask: who counts the wheel’s turns?
Who calibrates the hourglass?
Are they the same, the I
already at the Resolution
and the I who waits
within the work of time?
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