from "Geometries of Sounds in Time," Peter Westergaard


XXVIII
Is it hubris that makes us want to place
ourselves outside of time, out there with God?
But any pitch-time map we draw in space
does that. When we read music, we don't plod
our way through note by note. We grasp a measure
at a glance, but not, alas, whole pieces.
A little lower than the angels, we're
more like some one-dimensional worm whose pleasure,
as it eats its way through time, increases
with self-knowledge. Its now (it calls it "here")
is any of several points along its gut.
Its present--what it lives for--the whole stretch.
It wants to savor longer stretches, but
it can't. So in its mind's gut it makes a sketch
of how three stretches might be thought of in terms
of one. (Time worms are awfully clever worms.)