Time

Time – it is strange – it is strangely beautiful too
never to know what it is

and yet how much that lives in us is older
than we are, how much of it will outlive us

as a new-born child can look as though it is looking
at something inside itself, something it was given
to bring along with it

as Rembrandt looks in the last self-portraits
as though he can see where he is going
into a distance beyond our eyes

it is strange but strangely beautiful to reflect
that one day no one any more will know
we ever lived

to reflect on how now we live, how here
but also on how our life would be nothing without
the echoes from the unknown depths in our heads

it’s not time that passes, it’s you, it’s I
outside our thinking there is no time

this summer we stood on the edge of a valley
around us only wind.