Guest poem submitted by Steve Cookinham
(Poem #1832) Even Such is Time Even such is time, that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with earth and dust; Who, in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days: But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust. |
I'm 59 years old, and though a lifetime avid reader (mostly history) I really hadn't often "clicked" with a poem and so hadn't done much exploration of the genre before stumbling onto your site a couple of years ago. While on what was supposed to be a 'round the world bicycle trip - Odyssey 2000 - I missed a turn in the Drakensberg range in the Transvaal in South Africa and augured into a mountainside, breaking my pelvis, sacrum and some ribs. End of trip for me, and after surgery I spent a couple of months living in the home of a Boer couple in Mpumalanga. In a way the accident wasn't a completely bad thing, in that our discussions provided each of us insights into the others' country we didn't have before and I got to know some wonderful people. While I was recovering they took me one day to a used bookstore, where Petra found a 19th century anthology of English poetry and gave it to me. I stumbled onto Sir Walter Raleigh's "Even Such is Time" and in my near-death experience PTSD frame of mind it struck a deep chord. I loved this poem so much I even posted most of it on my country-store website along with a local photograph of a spot which always reminds me of the poem: [broken link] http://www.dayvillemerc.com/time.htm Steve Cookinham.
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