The infant sees a point, a line, a plane,
but must live years to wrap himself around
the temporal dimension. Shaped a strange
phenomenon, with neither form nor sound,
our moments of existence are as blind
as phalluses, as mute as solitude,
as odorless as dream. Our time’s a kind
of ruler marking stress and interlude.

We see in larger spaces as we grow.
We live in longer time as we survive.
There wasn’t any way for me to know,
15 and glum, in 1965,
that ‘63 to ‘68 would be
so big a wedge of private history.