Time and the Stork
Benny Andersen - A Danish Poet
I've heard about time
I've heard it can be long
I've heard you can run short of it
That it can be lost or won
That it can be due or precious
Right or wrong
Out or in
I've heard a lot about time
But I've never seen it.
As a child I imagined time
Like a sort of big beautiful bird
Probably a stork
Because I had heard
That time could fly
But also that it sometimes stood completely still
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I loved time at that time
Time with its long red beak
Standing still on one red leg
Bending over a deep dark pond
Before slowly unfolding its broad white wings
And floating for hours
Between heaven and endless meadows
But later I became confused when I heard
Of the wheels of time
Of a waste of time
And that time was actually money
Or that time was out of joint and so on
So eventually I lost
My childhood belief in the stork
And in fact
We have far less storks in Denmark now
Than we had at the time I believed in them
I've heard about time
I've written poems about time
I've written and heard a lot about time
I've had my time
Sometimes I've even been on time
But still I haven't seen it.
The picture to the left is Joyce and her daugther.
It was Joyce who gave us the last kick in our pants to go to Portland.
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