Time Flies, Time Usurps

Time Flies, Time Usurps

There was a time when childish steps
When naughty smile, idiotic tasks,
When lazy talks, aimless gossips
Had been aims of our youth days!

It was a time, such a time, indeed
When sports were sportive on us,
When bonding among our friends
When learning from our teachers
In and outside the classrooms –
Were more lasting than books says;

There was a time, decades ago
When youthful teachers were our
Heroic models, encouraging pillars
Their sparkling Achilles stunned us
Once and for all student-lives alike…

But alas! the “Time’s wing’d charriot”
Has turned our grapes into raisin,
Our youthful heroes, bit less-moving,
‘The second childishness, Mere oblivion’,
Caught some and many of them.
May be the “sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes”.
And the cruel claws of ‘time’ thus
Led some teachers into harsh senility
And few into faces unseen, souls in heaven.

While in us, what with us here,
The mundane business is universal,
Usurped even the ecstatic bonding,
The youths of energy, now turning to
‘Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation”.

Time, such is time, that cruel,
Cruel scissors snatching away
The unseen essence of our life
The energetic chasm of life’s
Uneven valleys, wondering hills
Are all, all trodden alike, a-plane
A plane land of no wonder!

—–
Md Nazim Uddin
09 January 2021