Time.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

One of the fundamental things to capture the human imagination and interest with fear, awe and a sense of inevitability. The race against and with time. Time and eternity. The ultimate and only truth that characterises life.

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

The ancient Greeks divided time into two contexts- chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological sequential time, the latter signifies a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens. Chronos is quantitative in nature-numeric and precise. The nature of Kairos is qualitative. While both are co-dependent and related, Kairos can be considered to be a sub-set of Chronos which is universal and ever progeressing, hence being absolute. Kairos connects time with space and the persona. In philosophy, kairos is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved." Kairos was the Greek god of "fleeting moment", “a favorable opportunity opposing the fate of man.” It was a moment which must be seized. Carpe Diem. Then comes Father Time- Chronos, the one who turns the Zodiac Wheel. The serpentine god and his consort, Inevitability, controlled the structure of the universe, the skies and oceans.

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to nought
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desparation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say.

Kairos, unlike Chronos, exists outside space-time. the former being metaphysical and the latter being physical. Kairos giving us the leisure to take a brief pause in the eternal continnum of Chronos by capturing the moment which has the possibility to be eternalised.

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.