Oh! yes! Time has reappeared; Time is sovereign ruler now…Yes, Time reigns; he has resumed his brutal tyranny. And he pokes me with his double goad as if I were an ox. ‘Then hoi, donkey! Sweat, slave! Man, be damned and live.’ Charles Baudelaire, The Double Room

Κρόνῳ ὕμνος
(A Hymn to Saturn)

I see death, occult and vicious,
Varied though the form may be.
Funeral pyres of sinful flesh or
Graves lost in the cemet’ry.

God of nature, fate enchanting,
Screeching sounds of howls and drones.
Smoke and incense snorting higher,
Lusting after gods unknown.

Harrowing descent to madness,
Sick with life, a putrid fever.
Ode to joy filled yet with sadness:
Spirit full of joi de vivre. 

Captured still by Time’s mean trappings,
Tortured thus for weal or woe.
Frankincense and rose: a fragrant 
Offering beneath my nose.

Silly songs of merriment where
Dancing children yelp with glee.
Ring-a-round the rosie’s chant
Of life’s inane absurdity.

Life immured, an earthly altar;
Ancient force of noxious darkness.
Self-oblation, take my soul, O’
Chronos—God of Time and Harvest!