What is Time?

One of the most rewarding things about going through my great-grandfather's journals has been the personal discovery of learning a little more about who I am and where I come from. I have always been slightly obsessed with imagery around time, flight and travel - latching on to passages from T.S. Eliot about measuring time in coffee spoons - and they litter Myles's writings. Even the little things: he signs off letters 'Au revoir' or 'Bon nuit' and throws in gratuitous foreign words to describe what he and his shipmates are doing or seeing. I am occasionally guilty of the same.

I see in much of what he writes my own thinking - which has made me wonder whether the ideas that resonate most strongly with a person are innate or whether you learn to examine and explore certain themes through regular exposure within your family.

Rifling through some loose leaf papers, I came across this poem. Over the years I had heard my grandfather recite it to my sisters and I many a time, but never fully appreciated where it had come from. For your reading pleasure....

---

What is Time? – Lines to an Inquirer

Time is the ever present now

Man measures by a clock

That keeps coy hands before its face

While its in’ads laugh. Tick Tock.

By solar time as east to west

The sun it seems to go

Though learned he knows quite well

Of course it is not so.

He’s sure a very clever chap

Whose thoughts seek the sublime

Yet thinks to make a longer day

With his clock pushed summer time

Time flies and on its wing

We are borne along.

Amid life’s cloud and sunshine

Pray friend, our hold be strong.

Past, present and the future

That stupendous trinity

makes humble as we ponder

dim-visioned, on its unity

Yet with the grade of God to guide us

As we sing aloud “Credo”

In our hearts we find the answer

To all we wish to know.

Written in 1957 by great-grandfather

Myles Toale