Clive Wearing: The Tragedy in Poetic Beauty

Eternally ethereal,
permanent transience.
Well that's a nice thought, isn't it?

The sliver of time
in which you exist,
a splinter in the tree
but you can't see
the grain.

Eternally ethereal,
permanent transience.
Well that's a nice thought, isn't it?

Playing the piano,
your closest kin:
the ivories strike chords
a thousand times over
without knowing
that they sounded
those very notes
mere moments ago.

Eternally ethereal,
permanent transience.
Well that's a nice thought, isn't it?

Human driftwood,
with no past
and no future
and no present—
for what is present
but an accumulation
of your past
decorated with where
you're heading?

Eternally ethereal,
permanent transience.
Well that's a nice thought, isn't it?

Unable to remember
the beginning of a thought
by the end of it.
And to think you once believed
in that pithy punk slogan
"always live in the moment!"
So choose your words wisely
lest the genie grant your prison
and you exist eternally ethereal,
permanent transience.
Well that's a nice thought, isn't it?



** Inspired by the predicament of Clive Wearing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDNDRDJy-vo#t=01m20s