Time II
Time is a dog which haunts you –
is a wolf which stalks you –
hangs, like guilt, round your neck
dragging you down to the grave.
Like Light it allows you
to perceive only a little –
lays bare Man's mortality.
16 October 1978
This poem has never been published before. Light appears in many of my poems, thirty of my adult poems (i.e. the poems from #453 on), and I suspect will appear in a lot of the juvenilia too. Light is, at least in my head, synonymous with truth and in my early poems both are often capitalised. Not sure where I picked up that habit from. It wasn’t from Emily Dickinson because I’ve only read her recently. Clearly I’m doing it to give additional emphasis to the words so I’m a little surprised I didn’t capitalise ‘guilt’ here too. The dog is the same one from ‘Stray’ and he appears in other poems too. For a cat person there are a surprising number of dogs in my poems. I would guess too this is the first time I use outdents to signify the beginnings of sentences. Not really needed here though as the separate stanzas do that quite nicely.
Marc PoKempner, "Tenement Dog," 1974,
Chicago Photography Collective, Chicago
4 comments:
"...time, like guilt..."
"...dragging you down to the grave."
At my age, it's more like galloping than a slow drag.
Nice poem.
My father told me time would speed up as I got older, Kass. I thought he was havering but the older I get the more I find the days pass like hours. What’s interesting to me is that I’d write a poem like this when I was still in my teens.
Yes, I suppose you have always been interesting.
I would like to think so, Kass. Other adjectives have been used over the years.
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