Another Time

For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is to-day in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,
So many have forgotten how
They say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace
To be a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of mine and His or Ours and Thiers.

Just as if time were what the used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are so lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie,
Another time has other lives to live.

W.H. AUDEN