What is time? I asked a beggar:
It’s the change of sun and moon, he said.
What is time? I asked a gentleman:
It’s the change of fortune, he said.
What is time? I asked a writer:
It’s the change of thoughts he said.
What is time? I asked a philosopher:
And received some mumbo jumbo instead.
Then I asked myself: what is time?
There is time by the span of existence.
There is time by the measure of distance.
There is time by the watch and by the sun.
There is time according to the fancies of one.
I asked myself: is there any other time?
And as I lay thinking, on a flat bedded rock,
I realized that time is not just by the clock.
I saw the threads of time woven through a thousand
Yesterdays, and moving towards the many tomorrows.
I felt time, and saw the linear progressive movement,
As memory, as hope, as becoming, as self improvement.
Putting aside all abstractions, and the ideas of surreal,
I looked around at facts and let the fallacies reveal.
The inward time I saw, the constantly turning wheel -
The continuity from yesterday to tomorrow I could feel.
I had got it at last — the truth that none could steal.
For many an hour I had been sitting lost in thought,
This I realized suddenly, as I glanced at my watch,
Finally, I had overcome that in which I had been caught.
I looked at the sky and saw that the moon had come up,
Picking up my jacket, I walked away from my lonely spot.
