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Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Les Temps Perduphabet (Past)

An American administration lasts four, maybe eight years. 
Its impact, for better or worse, drags on for lifetimes.

Ages ambulate for years.
Not Advents: four weeks, tops. 
An afternoon can drag on days –
as third acts can, when flops.
An attosecond…? Light takes time
to make those two short hops!* 
     * An attosecond measures the
time light takes to travel the width
of two hydrogen atoms, about one 
quintillionth of a second. 
 
Blips are brief. And as for beats…?
But fractions of a bar.
Some thirty minutes, bells at sea.
(In class, bells fifty are.*)
Biennia engage two years,
then bid one, "Au revoir." 
     * Back in the day, the length of 
typical high-school algebra class in 
minutes (though feeling far longer 
to some observers). 
 
The time a candle takes to burn
runs several hundred hours.
A century…? Eight hundred 
thousand hours – and more -- devours. 
(The first depends on how one takes 
account of candlepowers.)   
 
One’s life spins seven decades out –
in years, that's three score ten
(assuming decades ten years span):
so scrawls the Psalmist's pen. 
(A day...? In hours, twenty-four:
so chimes Old Smoke’s* Big Ben.)
      * A nickname originally 
bestowed on London due to its smog. 
The moniker’s persisted
 
An epoch's length's determin’d 
by a slew of 'ic'y stuff –
like geometr'ic's, astronom'ic's,
phys'ic's... (Had enough...?) 
"Yer era's just yer E.R.A.,"*
opines the baseball buff.
     * In baseball, the average number
of runs given up by a pitcher – his
so-called earned run average –
is not a measure of time at all. 
 
A Friedman marks six moons have pass'd;
a fortnight, fourteen suns. 
A February…? Eight plus twenty
('cept in leap year) runs.
A time frame's fluid: Brubeck (Dave)
took five and raked in tons.
(A femtosecond's fa-a-ar too short:
your time buff femtos shuns.)
 
How long's a generation…?
Whom you quiz may well prove weighty.
Galactic years…? Since time began,
far fewer've flown than eighty.* 
A gigasecond lasts one second – 
times one billion, matey!
(Gestations and Gregori'n years…?
Nowt…when you hail from Haiti.)
     * About 61 since the Big Bang,
as the time it takes the solar system
to orbit the center of the Milky Way
(which is the length of a galactic
year) measures about 225 million
earth years.
 
A moment lasts a minute and a half.
Thus, half a mo
should, as a rule, last merely
five and forty seconds. Go!
(Some sev’ral heartbeats – 
seventy plus two – each minute fill.
There may beat more -- or way, way less –
if one falls gravely ill.)
A hectosecond takes a hundred seconds,
more or less.
How many in an hour…?
Hey! You do the math. (Or guess.)
 
An instant takes no time at all.
Indictions…? Fifteen years.
An instant’s just a snapshot of 
right now -- in, say, Algiers.
(A verse which blends ‘em both…?
Perhaps a limerick of Lear’s...?)
 
A jiffy measures time elaps’d
as light migrates one fermi.
(A fermi’s never read of
in most tomes on taxidermy.)
A jubilee is fifteen years.
(Who so explains that term…? Me!)
 
What's 4.32 billion years...?
A kalpa. (Hey! Who knew...?)
What’s ten plus four and four/tenths 
minutes long…? That answer’s ke.
A ke’s Chinese. It’s sound approximates
the Frenchman’s ‘bleu.’
A kilosecond’s three halves of a ke
so there: adieu!   
Lents last forty days. For fasting folks 
Olympiads run four years long.
A while might last a watch or two.
those pose a strife time.
For lunar months, slice one half day
off thirty! Posed...? A knife time!
A lustrum lasts five years.
When you’re in jail, such seems a lifetime.
The bachelor (unless confirm’d)
spends, in the long run, wife time.
 
A month o’ Sundays…? Thirty weeks.
(In tetes-a-tetes, much greater.)
A moment lasts one minute and a half –
nor one tick later.
('M's teem. But, in the meantime... 
see ya later, alligator!)
The time twixt light's turn green
and cab horn's honk…? A New York second.
How long's the night depends on
where on earth good souls begin it.
(A billionth of a second…?
That’s a nanosecond, i’n’it…?)
The time 'twixt your snafu and your 
"Oh, no!"...? An onosecond.
(The nature of your fuck up or faux pas
can go unreckon'd.)
    
Planck time runs way, wa-a-a-ay shorter.
A length of time of three months
is a span they call a quarter.
Res satti has to do with
New Year’s Day. It's Latin…sorter.
 
Lamb’s tail’s shakes may fluctuate,
as may each sev’ral season.   
Semesters, too, may vary:
you might ask your school the reason.
If scenes run long, play fans cry, “Wrong!”
(The sin…? Theatric treason.)
A Scaramucci's ten days long,
post which he's Drumpf displeasin.'
 
A Tatum* is the time ‘twixt tones
in Art’s descending scale.
(A trice is also very short:
it ain’t no “pace de snail.”)
A "take two" starts once "take one" parts,
once "take one"’s deem’d “No sale!” 
     * Named for jazz great Art Tatum and 
 that pianist's lightning arpeggios.   
 
The Upper Pal’olithic Age
lasts 30,000 years.
A vamp 'til ready lasts
until the buzzing in one’s ears --
along with fear of failure,
nosebleed and amnesia -- disappears.
A while might last a week.
An (e)xasecond’s
1,000,000,000,000,000,000* seconds – so to speak.
     * Pronounced "one quintillion.
Yoctoseconds…? Zeptoseconds…?
They to me be Greek.
Exhausted I'm, so ends my rhyme.
(Just time to take a leak.)

Christmas Day: A Mare Egg...

     "A Mare Egg, Her Wrist, "Miss Two 'U'"