Backyard Archeology
If Newton really thought that time was a river,
like the Thames, then where is its source and into
what sea does it finally flow?
Austerlitz
W. G. Sebald
This dark: solid as soil
solid as layers of age
waiting. Or not waiting.
Just soil and all her com-
ponents. Planned or ran-
dom. Animal offerings.
Detritus. Rusty rusting
rusted. Cans of you choose: beef
stew? Spam? (the key's
missing but who cares, so
is the meat) Baked beans?
Each has been liberated, label,
contents. So, you can choose.
You can choose the mouth. You can
choose the occasion. You, who on
the handle end of the tool is made
to dig into the sod (later you'll relate
to your mate how dry, is it improbable?
it seemed, just being released from
winter. Because it's still
March, it's still giving
snow. There's a chance, an almanac
chance of a blizzard. Remember how
you've seen snow well enough gone into
the month of May. Ok. Make this
your day today: you'll be bid to
sharpen the blade of the spade
and make your way into the solid
dark. You'll be bid to heft and heave
to release and reveal the next and next
the strata of dark. Maybe a pottery
shard. Maybe a heart-shaped rock.
You'll still,
digging down, be on solid ground
or something solid enough as a concrete
vault built to hold all told and tolled (some
but again you choose) games of table grace
and waste. Pray, won't you. I was just saying
how Newton saw time like a river
and the question was if that's true
what then is its beginning and then
where does it, coursed, uncoursed (you
can and cannot choose) disappear to?
Today, I'd say maybe after you try to
flush it all away and it meets some solid
and slippery companion, collar up to hide
its face to shove it back and back to almost
where it came from, that time is a holding
tank, lid reluctant to lift without jacks and
levers and (you've dug enough down to see)
once the lid's lifted, a whole new world is stood
still: swill and scums and insides come undone
but you know it's not supposed to be this stood
still...Ok? This liquid solid caught in the proverbial
act. I'd say before the curtain falls or rises, that time is
Brian to the rescue with his pumps
and pressured backward air to vacuum
years of passage. We laugh at
our fate of being able to
colloquial or not shoot
the shit or chew the fat or
gnaw the bone while over us
uncapped, is dark, all dark, dug
and flung open, a grave hole
patient and emptying, emptying
of all the shirkers and lurkers
mongers of manure, there's
temporary stay of execution,
there's, you choose, you, remember,
can almost always choose, abatement.
