The class of 1967 Poem

Few Words of Context

It is an accepted conjecture in the field of theoretical physics that time is a human artifact, and in the larger scheme of reality-beyond our humanity and human perception-it does not exist. Seth Lloyd, the renowned theoretical physicist and quantum computer expert at MIT, when asked, "What time is it?” is quoted as replying, "Beats me.”

My poem is about time, our human progression through it and the mystery of what that means--stepping stones through life from the perspective of a college schoolboy. A future retrospective I call it to emphasize the point.

I put it in the first person, I recall, in part because of the dedication at the end which is intended to be a celebration of the end of life, that point at which we are released from bonds and life's mysteries and step into a timeless reality. A place now being enjoyed by our deceased friends and classmates whom we remember today, Dave among them.

Anyway, when asked what my poem says, that renowned class poet and biotech deal guy can be quoted as saying, "It doesn't say anything. You have to read it.” So here goes:

by Jan Andrew Buck

HERE

I lie gazing out a college window,

Here alone in my featherbed of fantasy.

I am excited, alive, and so much more,

My mind, a glowing prism, red and gray,

My nervous body, acid transforming

The physical lead of my humanity.

But I gaze out a college window,

Leaden rectangles that encompass crystals

When entice a captive soul to wistful realms,

Through the lead and granite complex crushing my sense

To awareness of its rank, gray reality.

There beyond this binding symmetry

The blue expanse supports another system,

Multiple branches of overlapping trees

Twisting, intertwining so randomly, yet

In a harmony that transgresses their reality.

Chills that often awaken me from my dreamland,

God, man, me, or are there really three;

Or is the first or last the sum of all

From which there is no escape, no dream.

O that I might fly through this concrete wall,

Because I cannot reconcile this mystery.

THERE

Time has called me to run the road that girds

The earth; my life, my age fleeting with me.

And as I go I grow, rounding my earth,

The faster I go, the greener the path; and Charlie

Pierce says I am spiraling up to rebirth.

I run the road that girds the earth;

And forcing it faster behind, I spin the sphere

And give it strength, my own, to grow.

The world now queen of heaven, now mother,

Blesses me for giving her my life.

I run the road, bursting to become a spoil,

A god in her temple while she for her own sake loves.

And so the earth blooms as my muscles swell,

And all the verdure becomes my garden rick.

Yet am I not an old, obese, and tiring god?

For soon the laurel wrath may wilt

With the sweat of a man who, sightless, made himself.

But soon I will stop this world, get off,

And she will crumble into the seas of fallen smiles.

And soon will I defy the god of the garden

To enter the garden of God, to sleep and dream.

NOW

“In the Nation’s Service” has guided Princeton men

To heights of social renown and wearisome might;

But Wilson died a battered man and then

His visions of grandeur faded as his light,

Consumed with the heat of vainglorious ken.

To service by winsome ideals we are led

To spin the world and crush what we can’t see,

To carry golden crosses and to bury the dead;

But has hearsay in books taught us what truth by

Or have we planted our seed in a watershed?

A silver island lies between the two,

When within this paradise of pastel lust

And thoughtful error we await the true;

And when toward narrow goals we check our thrust,

To reflect, to relive the mystery of that painful view.

From birth to birth we grow always in the end

Reflecting the duty to the past we owe;

In memoriam, Dave Chambers, a Friend.