Messed about by time, and the perspective of poetry

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The last couple of days I've been messed about by time. Well, messed about by watches anyway. Two or three years ago my Rotary watch, a gift from Sheila for my 21st birthday, finally creaked to a halt and the jeweller said it couldn't be repaired. So Sheila bought me a new watch, a Skagen slimline like the one in the picture. Last week at the Baptist Consultation, while delivering my paper, I became aware that it had been half past eleven for ages! The watch continued to start stop for a couple of days, finally giving up on Sunday morning, just as I was leaving for the Sunday service at Hillhead! I borrowed Sheila's, and went in the afternoon to have the battery changed. Only to be told it needed repairing and would cost a lot.

I came home weighed the pros and cons, but I do need a reliable watch, so I ordered a replacement, virtually the same but with a different coloured face – titanium blue this time. Then I went into my desk drawer where my old Rotary had lain untouched for over two years, wound it up more in hope than expectation – and it started, and kept going, and is still going. So I have a new watch coming, which is ok cos the old Rotary has a high mileage on the clock. But speaking with another watch repairer in Glasgow, he didn't seem to think my first Skagen was irreparable, and would estimate before proceeding, and at no charge for the check up and tests. I could end up with three watches, which isn't at all what I set out to do.

Elizabeth_jennings
While negotiating my way through these past days of unreliable time, I was also reading Elisabeth Jennings and came across this poem. Is it not a beautiful meditation on the elusive and perplexing experience of time, the unknown future, the known history, and the present which is all we actually have…momentatily? This is Jennings the Christian poet at near her best, as she takes something ordinary, like ordinary time, and finds a pathway from there to those deep doctrinal realities that are themselves the mainspring of Christian faith.

The poem is dedicated to a Dominican preacher.You can find out about him here.


Time's Element
For Robert Ombres OP

I know that I was wrong about the hours
      And time and clocks and bells.
I thought that only future had its powers
Upon us. Hearing you, I see the false

Premise and perspective. All that's now
      Indeed is moved into
Futures we can't rely on or know how
Anything that happens here is true.

Of course the past is only sure and feels
      Certain. It is our
History. The future may be false
And any moment take from us one hour.

Then I remembered those prophetic words,
      'Before all was I am.'
Christ lived among us with a cross and swords
And yet he with his Virgin Mother came

Into the moments of the angel's plea.
      She carried God and man
And gave the future her willed history
As she took part in God the Father's plan.

From Elizabeth Jennings. New Collected Poems (Carcanet: 2002) 308.

Comments

2 responses to “Messed about by time, and the perspective of poetry”

  1. Zina avatar

    Interesting post!! I love this watch…

  2. Zina avatar

    Interesting post!! I love this watch…

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