Little Lame Buffoon Man

Dumb prosody of calendars
Thrills him more than the labored prose
Of scholarly storytellers
Spinning intelligent fictions.

Today was the eightieth day
Of the third year of the second
Decade of the first century
Of the popes' third millennium,

As well as the astronomers'
First day of spring in northern lands,
First day of autumn Down Under,
Past an imaginary line.

The versified fiction of hours
Makes the past enumerable,
Gives an afternoon character,
Makes snowy mountains gates of spring.

What delight, demarcations
Drawn in the air, twilight and dawn,
The kingdom of countable days,
The rhyming of times, time, and Time.