Poem by Wystan Hugh Auden

We're Late

Clocks cannot tell our time of day
For what event to pray
Because we have no time, because
We have no time until
We know what time we fill,
Why time is other than time was.
Nor can our question satisfy
The answer in the statue's eye:
Only the living ask whose brow
May wear the Roman laurel now;
The dead say only how.

What happens to the living when we die?
Death is not understood by Death; nor You, nor I.

1. After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics
2. On the Circuit
3. Horae Canonicae: Prime
4. Christmas Oratio
5. At the Party

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