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 still 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.

(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 at which their prisoners were allowed to flee before the 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 outwards towards infinity – and perhaps, as Buzz Lightyear adds, beyond…