Let Me Not to the Passage of True Time by Aashna Majmudar

Let me not to the passage of true time 

Admit impediments. Time is not time 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove. 

O no! it is an ever-flying lark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the breeze to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although her height be taken. 

Time’s not Love’s fool, though heart break and poetry

Within her bending sickle’s compass come;

Time races on with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever thought.

As i counted down the days to my exams, my mother measured the passing of time through the growth of her orchid collection. there was something beautiful about how our experience of time differed so greatly, even as we spent it under the same roof. as nations worldwide crumbled under the weight of covid-19, and millions of lives were disrupted like never before, time got by unscathed. as we bunkered down into our homes and prepared for a long summer away from the world, it kept moving. it did not care for my anxiousness or my mother’s joy, it did not care for my preparation or my mother’s anticipation. i – immersed in my contemplative rendition of summer – would go so far as to call it romantic. in a cruel, twisted and beautiful way, romantic. and nothing comes close to being as romantic as shakespeare’s sonnets. and so the idea of ‘let me not to the passage of true time’ was born. 

– Aashna Majmudar