If I Were to Love Till The End of Time

A poem by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

If I were to love you till the end of time,

then time must be the impression of an ending,

or a gigantic globe with smooth edges and limits,

gluts of vastness, like beauty in a bloody bottle,

with breakability glittering like white diamonds;

where we can climb while rolling on its axis;

as the end of time is a fragment of its fragility,

and love is another clever art of staying alive,

when time’s end stretches beyond imagination.

Then I should learn to cling to the edge of life,

when the globe of love tosses me around,

and I’m growing in the shadows of timelessness

where death will have a taste of that beauty

stacked carefully in the freezers of the living.

I know that life has no time but depth

which is the Heaven of passing beauty;

for nothing permanent catches the passing eye

when the eye itself is the bridge to a body

condemned to flourish and disappear;

nothing permanent can stimulate the eye

when it stands to survive every season

and movement is not in its compartment.

Nor does it create a pulse through instability.

To love with the heart and not the eyes

is to discard eternity like a trite cliché,

that has neither depth nor admiration,

collapsing on the flat ground of frequency;

there is no precious time to love the living,

but that which is preserved for the love of the dead.