Cresting Into One's Present

"This nondescript, never-to-be-defined daytime is
The secret of where it takes place
And we can no longer return to the various
Conflicting statements gathered, lapses of memory
Of the principal witnesses. All we know
Is that we are a little early, that
Today has that special, lapidary
Todayness that the sunlight reproduces
Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe
Sidewalks. No previous day would have been like this.
I used to think they were all alike,
That the present always looked the same to everybody
But this confusion drains away as one
Is always cresting into one's present."
- John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Time and Becoming

Process Philosophy

"But all the clocks in the city
     Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
     You cannot conquer time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
     Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
     And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
     Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
     To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
     Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
     And the diver's brilliant bow.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
     The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
     A lane to the land of the dead."
-  W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening, 1937