THE ARROW OF TIME

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has given us a sporting start,

But Time will run us down,

Like man-hunters honing their spears,

Measuring our breath in the rain-risen dawn

As we race past the arrow in the wilderness

And the certainty of death, towards life itself.

And all life ever here on populous planet Earth

Has lived in the twelve and a half miles girdle

Between Mount Everest and the Mariana Trench,

Riding the glorious freak of chance that made us

Light up the solar system’s dark, vast loneliness,

But as we circle the Sun and rush ever faster away,

The universe expands and we contract and end:

And no matter how we may bid Time to stay,

The lark will ascend,

Ever higher, ever farther away.

And from white dwarf to red giant,

From the organism to the machine:

All will run down in Time

And be run down by Time,

And nothing can or has or will go

Beyond the endless flight of Time’s arrow.

(C. IGR 2012)

 American Indians would sometimes sport with their captives, firing an arrow high and far on to the plain; where it fell would mark the point to which their prisoners would be allowed to flee before th hunt would begin.

The 'arrow of time' is a complex scientific concept which can be crudely summed up as 'no turning back'. After the 'Big Bang' and the first sparks of creation, everything eventually outlives its growth, declines into entropy and dies, even as the universe surges outward into infinity and perhaps - as Buzz Lightyear adds - beyond...