Kairos and Logos

 

Word and time revolve like money, 

forget the dream of Eden 

or a good, long, unpolitical cry,

word grips a pocket watch, time its knife

and no one gets home so clean 

 

as when he left—no wonder 

we can’t find luckier selves—

like Auden we should have known

Faery Queens are beyond our means.

Some justly plead with both,

 

standing at the mantle 

of winter and hearth, low murmur,

let me have another ten or twenty.

Giver of life, translate for me

A spindrift, twilit word of snow 

 

If nothing more I should know.