"Time"

Time

Allen Curnow

I am the nor'west air nosing among the pines

I am the water-race and the rust on the railway lines

I am the mileage recorder on the yellow signs.

I am dust, I am distance, I am lupins back of the beach

I am the sums the sole-charge teachers teach

I am cows called to milking and the magpie's screech

I am nine o'clock in the morning when the office is clean

I am the slap of the belting and the smell of the machine

I am the place in the park where the lovers were seen.

I am recurrent music the children hear

I am level noises in the remembering ear

I am the sawmill and the passionate second gear.

I, Time, am all these, yet these exist

Among my mountainous fabrics like a mist,

So do they the measurable world resist.

I, Time, call down, condense, confer

On willing memory the shapes these were

I, more than your conscious carrier,

Am island, am sea, am father, farm and friend,

Though I am here, all things my coming attend;

I am, you have heard it, the Beginning and the End.

Lupins: Type of flower