Augustine
Some years ago, or yesterday,
I threw a book into the air,
a medium tome,
hard backed, gold edged and well bound.
I watched as it arced
slowly through each temporal cliché
from the dawn of time till Gabriel’s call,
becoming something new
within the changing quanta
of the universe.
I see it leave a fading rainbow
of trailing images
in the continuum that is the past.
As it twisted and splayed,
carrying its recorded magic
from one instant to the next,
I cannot tell if it stayed the same
or has such infinite existences
so as not to be at all.
Quite suddenly it is substance
in my hand once more,
its spine unbroken,
its future and its truth intact.
and from its pages beckoned
those meaningless words
once silently remembered
by the Holy Bishop of Hippo