"Hymn to Time," by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Hymn to Time”

Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.

Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.

+ Ursula K. Le Guin

Best known for her works of speculative fiction (including science fiction and fantasy, most famously her Earthsea series), Ursula K. Le Guin preferred to be known simply as an “American novelist.” She won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best novel (for “The Left Hand of Darkness”), the first woman to do so.

Though she was raised, as she put it, “as irreligious as a jackrabbit,” in her teens and adult life she took a keen interest in Taoism and Buddhism, and ideas of balance, equilibrium, and ephemerality pervade her work — including this poem on the nature of time.

She once said, “I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality.”