ANOSOGNOSIA<\/b><\/p>\n
Why don’t they tell us (but would we want to know?)<\/p>\n
that time’s inflationary,
\nits power of purchase doesn’t grow,
\nit shrinks:<\/p>\n
at first imperceptibly,
\nthen accelerating steadily,
\ntill days are flicking by like phone poles from a wailing train<\/p>\n
or stroboscopic fragments of your
\nparents’ nervous smiles
\nas you keep hurtling
\nround and round
\non some
\nvertiginous
\nvehicle
\nof amusement.<\/p>\n
“Why, I remember, when I was your age, a morning would last a day,
\na summer a year, a decade nearly a lifetime.
\nIf I’d held my hands apart to show my life line up till then, look:
\nthis is how long it would have been…
\nSo do you think where I am now is seven times as far?
\nHa! twice, three times at most.
\nAnd the last third’s
\nthe shortest<\/i>.”<\/p>\n
But who can understand such baleful reckoning? and besides,
\na proportionate paling of our sense and recollection
\nmust be factored in too,
\ndiminishing awareness of our ills
\neven as they increase.<\/p>\n
Lord Russell had a killjoy uncle who informed him as a child,
\nat the close of an especially glorious day,
\n“You’ll never know another day like this one.”
\nAnd little Russell cried and cried, and then forgot<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Even “seize the rosebuds”
\nis a futile admonition
\nthat rings true only
\nfor the long since anosmic.
\nAnd isn’t there (confess it)
\nsome diffraction too
\nin those wistful flashbacks to your day, when that buck stretched so much farther than it does today?<\/p>\n
Which buck?
\nThere’s no fixed scale
\nof barter or utility.
\nThe goods, they differed too then,
\nand not just in their quality,
\nbut in your own ability
\nto savor it.<\/p>\n
Generation gap.
\nCommunication gap.
\nIt’s Zeno’s paradox:
\nYou can’t get there from here.
\n“Tempora mutantur. Et nos?”<\/i><\/p>\n
Why don’t they tell us (but would we want to know)?<\/p>\n