TIME’S PASSAGE
By:
April 10, 2025
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Winged cavalcade of me riding over all
things,
Exploded cavalcade of me riding under all
things,
Winged and exploded cavalcade of me for
the sake of all things…
Alley-oop over the trees, alley-oop under
ponds,
Alley-oop into the walls, alley-oop against
tree trunks,
Alley-oop in the air, alley-oop in the wind,
alley-oop on beaches,
With increasing, insistent, frenetic speed,
Alley-oop alley-oop alley-oop alley-oop…
Pantheistic cavalcade of me inside all
things,
Energetic cavalcade of me inside all
energies,
Cavalcade of me inside the coal that burns,
inside the lamp that glows,
Inside every kind of energy,
Cavalcade of a thousand amperes,
Explosive cavalcade, exploded like a
bursting bomb,
Cavalcade bursting in all directions at the
same time,
Cavalcade over space, a leap over time,
Hurdling ion-electron horse, compressed
solar system
Inside the driving pistons, outside the
turning flywheels.
Inside the pistons I take the form of raging
abstract speed,
Acting by iron and motion, come-and-go,
madness, pent-up rage,
And on the rim of every flywheel I turn
staggering hours,
And the entire universe creaks, sizzles, and
booms in me.
Whoooosssshhhh
Ever faster, the mind ever farther ahead of
the body,
Ahead even of the rushing idea of the
propelled body,
The mind behind ahead of the body,
shadow, spark,
Hey-ya-whoooooo… Heyawhooooo…
All energy is the same and all nature is the
same …
The sap of tree sap is the same energy that
turns
Train wheels, streetcar wheels, the diesel
engine’s flywheels,
And a vehicle moved by mules or gasoline
is moved by the same thing.
Pantheistic rage of awesomely feeling
With all my senses fizzing and all my pores
fuming
That everything is but one speed, one
energy, one divine line
From and to itself, arrested and murmuring
furies of mad speed…
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Whooooooossssssshhhhhhh
Hail, hurrah, long live the hurtling unity of
all things!
Hail, hurrah, long live the equality of all
things soaring!
Hail, hurrah, long live that great machine
the universe!
Hail, because you — trees, machines, laws
— are the same,
Hail, because you — worms, pistons,
abstract ideas — are the same,
The same sap fills you, the same sap
transforms you,
You are the same thing, and the rest is
outer and false,
The rest, the static rest that remains in
eyes that stop moving,
But not in my combustion-engine nerves
that run on heavy or light oil,
Not in my all-machine, all-gear-system
nerves,
Not in my train, tram, car, steam-thresher
nerves,
Ship-engine, diesel-engine, semidiesel,
Campbell nerves,
100 percent steam-run, gas-run, oil-run,
and electric-run nerves,
Universal machine moved by belts of all
momentums!
Smash, train, against the buffer of the
sidetrack!
Ram, steamer, into the pier and split open!
Dash, automobile driven by the madness of
all the universe,
Over the edge of every cliff
And crash — bam! — into smithereens in
the bottom of my heart!
Straight at me, all projectile objects!
Straight at me, all object directions!
Straight at me, all objects too swift to be
seen!
Strike me, pierce me, pass right through
me!
It’s I who strike, who pierce, who pass
through myself!
The rage of all impetuses closes in a
me-circle!
Heya-whoooooo my train, auto, airplane
desires.
Speed, force your way into all ideas,
Collide into all dreams and shatter them,
Scorch all humanitarian and useful ideals,
Crush all normal and decent and
harmonious feelings,
Catch in the whirl of your heavy and dizzy
flywheel
The bodies of all philosophies, the tatters
of all poems,
Shredding them till only you remain, an
abstract flywheel in space,
Metallic supreme lord and libido of
Europe’s hour.
Let’s go, may the cavalcade never end, not
even in God!
Let’s go even if I should fall behind the
cavalcade, even if I must clutch
The horse’s tail and be dragged, mangled,
lacerated, lost
In free fall, my body and soul behind my
abstract yearning,
My giddy yearning to transcend the
universe,
To leave God behind like a negligible
milestone,
To leave..…
My imagination hurts, I don’t know how,
but that’s what hurts.
The sun on high inside me is sinking.
Dusk is starting to fall over the blue and in
my nerves.
Let’s go, cavalcade, who else will you turn
me into?
I, this swift, voracious glutton of abstract
energy,
Who wanted to eat, drink, claw and flay the
world,
I, who could only be satisfied by
trampling the universe underfoot,
Trampling, trampling, trampling until
feeling nothing …
I feel that all of what I wanted eluded what
I imagined,
That although I wanted everything,
everything lacked.
Cavalcade dismantled above all summits,
Cavalcade dissolved underneath all wells,
Cavalcade flight, cavalcade arrow,
cavalcade flashing thought,
Cavalcade I, cavalcade I, cavalcade universe-I.
Heyawhoooooooo …
My elastic being, a spring, a needle, a
trembling…
— Published during WWI. An excerpt from “Time’s Passage,” a very long poem translated by Richard Zenith. One of several long and loud “sensationalist” poems written c. 1914–18. Found in Fernando Pessoa & Co.: selected poems.
Álvaro de Campos was one of the poet Fernando Pessoa’s various heteronyms, with a reputation for a powerful and angry style of writing. This alter ego is recounted to have been born in Tavira, Portugal. He studied mechanical engineering, to finally graduate in ship engineering at Glasgow.
Richard Zenith writes:
Pessoa left eight fragments (plus some isolated verses) of this incomplete poem. There are virtually no clues as to how-or whether-he would have assembled them. The translation follows the transcription found in Teresa Rita Lopes’s edition of Campos’s poetry. The fragments have been reordered, however, according to a dramatic logic (as far as this is possible) and without regard to chronology. Five dots (…..) indicates passages left incomplete by the author. Blank spaces left between stanzas, where the author may have thought to add something at a later date, are not necessarily indicated.
“Campbell nerves” — Zenith suggests this probably refers to the famous boat and automobile racer Sir Malcolm Campbell.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.