A COURSE OF TIME
Time used to be the echo of an axe
within a wood, only one of many.
Now it's the piercing noise of a chain saw
within a forest, one of few, if any.
Such a careless course
won't let you relax.
Vincent
van Mechelen
80.LNW
[MP3
FILE, 1.3 MB, 1:20, MONO
WITH SYMMETRICAL BACKGROUND MUSIC]
The beginning of the above poem was inspired by Philip Larkin's
This Is The First Thing, of which the third line is
Time is the echo of an axe.
(Hence the less phonematic axe instead of ax.)
Larkin's poem of no more than four lines was written 81 years earlier.
* The initial font size of
for the poem proper is a font size at which there is a complete
correspondence between a poetic line and a typographical
line.
With the standard font size of 100% a poetic line may be divided
over two or more successive typographical lines
dependent on the width of the viewport.
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