Lines for a Lockdown: 'time for past present and future'

Ecclesiastes

there is a time for opening the eye and closing the bed
time for donning a shirt and shedding sleep
time for drowsy soap and half-awaked skin
time for the hair-brush and for sparks in the hair
time for trouser legs time for shoe-laces for buttons
for laddered stockings for the slipper’s blindness
time for the fork and for the knife times for sausages and boiled eggs
time for the tram time for the conductress time for the policeman
time for good morning and time for goodbye
time for carrots peas and parsley
for tomato soup and shepherd’s pie
time for trussing chicken and releasing forbidden speeds of thought
time for a cinema ticket or a ticket to nowhere
to a river perhaps perhaps perhaps to a cloud
there is finally a time of closed eyelids and the open bed
time for the past present and future
praesans historicum and pluaquamperfectum
time perfect and imperfect
time from wall to wall

by Tymoteusz Karpowicz


translated by Adam Czerniawski, from The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Ecco, 2010.