Poetry on Time: Slow Time

Erato, Muse of Poetry

Poetry on Time

Two Poems from Slow Time

Edited by Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com

BC:AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvited timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

U. A. Fanthorpe (born in 1929, London)
Slow Time: 100 Poems to Take You There
Edited by Niall MacMonagle,
Marino Books, Dublin, 2000, p. 160.

************

TIMETABLE

We all remember school, of course:
the lino warming, shoe bag smell, expanse
of polished floor. It's where we learned
to wait: hot-cheeked in class, dreaming,
bored, for sour milk, for noisy now.
We learned to count, to rule off days,
and pattern time in coloured squares:
purple English, dark green Maths.

We hear the bells, sometimes,
for years, and heed the squeal
of white on black. We walk, don't run
in awkward pairs, hoping for the open door,
a foreign teacher, fire drill. And love's
long aertex summers, tennis sweat,
and somewhere, someone singing flat.
The art room, empty, full of light.

Kate Clanchy (born 1965, Glasgow),
Slow Time: 100 Poems to Take You There
Edited by Niall MacMonagle,
Marino Books, Dublin, 2000, p. 49.