Love and Time

Or... suffering to eternal presence.

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

“No distance or time can separate us because our love is eternal.”

Time is too slow for those who wait,
Like the snail that drags itself away
On the infinite and cursed road

Of waiting. Every hour that goes
By seems a century of pain,
Every minute an agony

That stretches, that empties itself
Into an eternity of boredom,
Like a prison that chains

The soul in anguish, in denied
Joy of the present.
Who waits, bores

Himself eternally,
Sees the sun move with effort
In the slow and tedious sky.

But who fears, who is frightened
Of the future that approaches,
Finds that time remembers

To run, that it approaches
Too soon to its goal,
That it walks too quickly

Toward the most secret hour
That he fears. For the fearful
Time is an arrow shot

That flies into the hidden
Future, without giving him time
To prepare the dangerous

Moment that every time
Carries with it, the trial
That always and always I contemplate

With terror. I find
That hours are rapid
Like water that moves

In a waterfall. The greedy
Hands of the clock
Run, no longer composed

But in mad clockwork
That beats too strongly,
That sounds without outlet

The time of death
That approaches. The day
Shortens, my fate

Is to see around me
Time that tightens,
That accelerates the return

To the moment that girds him
With fear, that grips him
In the future that feigns itself

Enemy. But who grips
In pain his heart,
Who in his land

Of tears, of lost
Love, who in the shadow
Of his pain

Every day clears
The memory of good
That he had and that now clutters

Only with bitter pains
His living, for him
Time has no reins:

It stretches like an infinite
Flow of torment,
Like a river that never

Calms. Every moment
Is a century of weeping,
Every hour a lament

That lasts so long
That it seems never to end,
A weeping

That knows not what to say
Except the name
Of what it saw die.

Pain, like
Magnifying lens,
Dilates hours, like

A sea that in torment
Stretches to infinity:
Every second is slow

Like the wounded step
Of one who walks with effort
On the lost path

Of life. But the contentment
Of those who rejoice finds
That time is a fleeting

Moment, that one tries
To hold it in vain:
Joy always finds

That sovereign time
Flies away too soon,
That it slips from hands

Like water. The feast
Lasts little, the smile
Is lightning that awakens

And dies. Who has face
Shining with happiness
Sees that earthly

Paradise doesn't last, that
Joy has butterfly wings
That flies away, that

Beatitude is a ball
Of snow in the sun:
It melts, it flows away

In little. Who knows joy
Flies, knows that time
Always puts millstone

To happiness. But time
Transforms, changes face,
Becomes another temple

When love embraces
The soul. Then the course
Of time relaxes

Into eternal aid
Of love, and is no more
Neither a slow nor fast

Course, but is more:
It is present eternity,
It is the hour that never was

And that permanent
Remains in the instant
That becomes transparent

To the divine. The lover
No longer knows time
That passes but that standing

Is always, outside time,
Outside human measure,
In this eternal moment

That death does not heal
Because it cannot die
What love heals

In eternal flowing
That no longer flows
But that knows how to transform

Time into eternal
"You", into presence
That never fails, that was

Always. The experience
Of love is passage
That leads to the essence

Of time: the arch
That has no beginning
Nor end, the mark

Of eternal principle
That governs all,
The indelible principle

That eternally governs
Everything in love,
Where time becomes

Always, where dies
Succession and is born
The eternal that does not die.

For those who love and no longer feed
On time but on love,
Time unfastens itself

From hours, from pain
Of succession,
And becomes the very core

Of passion:
Present eternity
In illumination

Of my soul that feels
That love is the only
True patient time.