ON TIME Poem by Tuvia Ruebner

1.
Are you asking me about time?
It's no friend of mine. Why talk
about faceless time? Because it will never look you in the eye,
but suddenly strikes and claims
there's nothing like it to heal wounds?
Because it whispers sweet consolations in your ear,
crushes your body in one blow,
tosses it away at a forsaken angle?

2.
The son, the son asking "What's this?"
after a goodbye embrace, then, at a foreign airport -
this, this is time.
This is time standing still.
This is timeless time.
Too bad for all the wise people who try to say
smart or clever things.
Woe to all this knowledge.

3.
What a sweet dream for the one who can't last
in his situation, impatient, he seeks
to shed his skin and fix his eyes on the second hand of the clock
which runs on as if chasing its shadow
onward only, away from here,
only onward, always onward
always, always
to the place it came from.