The Greatest Ocean
When stars glimmered o’er the wand’ring gypsy
when waves dashed ‘gainst the hulls of clipper ships
that cut through foam under night’s diamond sky;
when young lovers touched their yearning hips,
their eyes glinting for each other like jewels,
hope lay in their hearts, fighting against time.
What is time but a relentless killer?
It kills men, leaves, larks, galaxies, and rhymes
with the same cooling, corrosive pressure.
Paradoxically, it kills e’en age,
which, like all things, it has birthed in its way.
Such things as sailors carry: hope, promise,
a lookout and longing for distant land,
are, like youth, destroyed by time’s steady hand.
Time, whose heart is a mysterious sea;
Time, that the universe must have to be.
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The Greatest Ocean
