london life

dog days

“when you stop to consider
the days spent dreaming of a future
and say then, that was my life.”

for the days are long –
from the first milk van
to the last shout in the night,
an eternity. but the weeks go by
like birds; and the years, the years
fly past anti-clockwise
like clock hands in a bar mirror.

- derek mahon

i love poetry. i love the way you can look at a bunch of words and it feels like you are holding a mirror to your soul. when the words describe exactly how you feel before you even know that you felt that way.

anyway, so i stumbled across this poem when i first arrived in london and latched onto the first stanza. this is because at the time, i felt that i was living only for some future goal - you know the thought process: just wait till i finish studying, just wait till i get overseas, just wait till i get a job, just wait till i go travelling, and on and on, etc. always grasping for the future and never quite getting there.

however whilst having dinner with mates last night and reminiscing about the last few years in london this poem popped into my head again and the second stanza took on new significance – for although the hours and days in my mundane office job drag by like there's gonna be no tomorrow, the weeks and months and years have flown past and i’m at a loss as to where they have gone. life sure does seem to rush by these days.