Pithy expressions of impermanence
August 9, 2012 3:57 PM   Subscribe

What are some brief poetic expressions of the concept of impermanence?

For example, I can think of "All good things must come to an end" but this is a one sided expression of impermanence. All bad things end as well!
posted by vegetable100% to Writing & Language (65 answers total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
how piteous!
beneath the soldiers helmet
chirps a cricket
posted by KokuRyu at 4:02 PM on August 9, 2012


You cannot step twice into the same river.--Heraclitus
posted by OmieWise at 4:02 PM on August 9, 2012 [2 favorites]


Tempus fugit.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:02 PM on August 9, 2012




Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

From the Diamond Sutra. Can't locate the name of the translator. Buddhist writings are full of stuff about impermanence.
posted by zadcat at 4:06 PM on August 9, 2012 [3 favorites]


I've just picked up The Chicken Qabalah by Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford/Lon Milo DuQuette (which I can neither endorse nor discount) and I've found his sort of defacto mantra flating around my brain:

"Hell no! Don't worry about it!"
posted by cmoj at 4:08 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've always liked the old, 'This too shall pass'
posted by DingoMutt at 4:09 PM on August 9, 2012 [3 favorites]




"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Ozymandias, Shelley
posted by kindall at 4:11 PM on August 9, 2012 [7 favorites]


"All we are is dust in the wind." -Kansas
posted by auntie maim at 4:14 PM on August 9, 2012 [3 favorites]


Heh. I was going to go with "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone" ...
posted by small_ruminant at 4:14 PM on August 9, 2012


Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow....

From Macbeth
posted by Sukey Says at 4:17 PM on August 9, 2012


Fish and visitors stink after three days.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 4:23 PM on August 9, 2012


"Memento mori"; "et in Arcadia ego."
posted by decagon at 4:24 PM on August 9, 2012


The Venerable Bede:

"The present life of man, O King, seems to be like the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein You sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad.

The sparrow, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged.

So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are entirely ignorant."
posted by Cocodrillo at 4:25 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


And how did I forget "sic transit gloria mundi"?
posted by decagon at 4:25 PM on August 9, 2012


Shakespeare's Sonnet 60 too long?

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith, being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of natures truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow;
And yet, to times, in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
posted by trip and a half at 4:26 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Come quickly - as soon as
these blossoms open,
they fall.
This world exists
as a sheen of dew on flowers.
-Izumi Shikibu
(translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani)
posted by gudrun at 4:26 PM on August 9, 2012




If 60 isn't too long, then 73 isn't either.


That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
posted by likeso at 4:32 PM on August 9, 2012


The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:32 PM on August 9, 2012


Nothing ends without breaking, because everything is endless.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 4:33 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
posted by Elly Vortex at 4:34 PM on August 9, 2012


Not completely pithy, but I've always loved this poem about a dead groundhog. I suppose after reading it you can select a stanza or two that resonates.

I like this one:

But the year had lost its meaning,
And in intellectual chains
I lost both love and loathing,
Mured up in the wall of wisdom.
posted by aintthattheway at 4:35 PM on August 9, 2012


Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?

Tolkien, The Two Towers

posted by zadcat at 4:35 PM on August 9, 2012 [2 favorites]


Nothing Gold Can Stay -- Robert Frost, 1823

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
posted by vers at 4:36 PM on August 9, 2012 [8 favorites]


Typo -- sub 1923!
posted by vers at 4:37 PM on August 9, 2012


"Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse."
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:38 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


"We exist in the minds of other people, in thousands of memory clusters, and one by one those clusters fade and disappear. Some years from now, at a funeral with a slide show, only one person will be able to say who we were. Then no one will know." (Roger Ebert)
posted by perhapses at 4:48 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


In Waiting for Godot, Pozzo says, "They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."
posted by unsub at 4:50 PM on August 9, 2012






Aw, I really like the The Two Towers poem as a suggestion. While we're at it, how about the Old English Wanderer, on which Tolkien's poem was partially based?

Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?
Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas for the bright cup!
Alas for the mailed warrior!
Alas for the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away,
dark under the cover of night,
as if it had never been!

Full OE text and modern English translation can be found here.
posted by DingoMutt at 4:56 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


And yet time hath his revolution; there must be a period and an end to all temporal things, finis rerum, an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere? Where is Bohun, where's Mowbray, where's Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality. And yet let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God.

(Ranulphe Crewe)

Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die:
Lord, have mercy on us

(Thomas Nashe)
posted by Cocodrillo at 4:56 PM on August 9, 2012


Or there's Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest:

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.

Or of course Hamlet with Yorick's skull:

Here hung those
lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes
now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that
were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your
own grinning? Quite chap- fall'n? Now get you to my lady's
chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.
posted by unsub at 4:59 PM on August 9, 2012 [2 favorites]


Our pleasance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory.
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee---

Timor Morris conturbat me.

posted by Sidhedevil at 5:25 PM on August 9, 2012


And to follow up scratch

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:27 PM on August 9, 2012


Holy shit, iPad, that's supposed to be "mortis", not "Morris"! Neither William Dunbar nor I are troubled by a fear of Morris, be he cat, designer, or jingly dance!
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:27 PM on August 9, 2012 [3 favorites]


Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
--Macbeth

1 Here are the words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 All is meaningless – says the Teacher – meaningless, meaningless!
3 What profit is there for a man in all his work for which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, a generation comes and the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises, the sun sets, hastening towards the place where it again rises. 6 Blowing to the south, turning to the north, the wind goes round and round and after all its rounds it has to blow again.
7 All rivers go to the sea but the sea is not full; to the place where the rivers come from, there they return again.
8 All words become weary and speech comes to an end, but the eye has never seen enough nor the ear heard too much.
9 What has happened before will happen again; what has been done before will be done again: there is nothing new under the sun.
10 If they say to you, “See, it’s new!” know that it has already been centuries earlier.
11 There is no remembrance of ancient people, and those to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
--Ecclesiastes
posted by shivohum at 5:35 PM on August 9, 2012


I've always been rather partial to the Old English poem, "The Ruin", from the Exeter Book. The fact that parts of the poem are now missing because our sole copy has burn marks adds a bit of wry irony. I've pasted one English translation below (presumably by Sian Echard, whose site it's from), however Old English poetry (like most poetry) doesn't translate particularly well into modern English: it has an alliterative structure in the original - one that gives it its poetic character - that most translations don't preserve. This translation attempts to mimic it somewhat, although imperfectly. Still, I've always found it an incredibly evocative poem, and I think that this is preserved even in translation: it that explores how not only humans and their heroic deeds and memories of those deeds pass away, but even the very stone structures that they build, that seem so permanent, that last many generations, eventually fall away as well.

Wondrous is this wall-stead, wasted by fate.
Battlements broken, giant’s work shattered.
Roofs are in ruin, towers destroyed,
Broken the barred gate, rime on the plaster,

walls gape, torn up, destroyed,
consumed by age. Earth-grip holds
the proud builders, departed, long lost,
and the hard grasp of the grave, until a hundred generations
of people have passed. Often this wall outlasted,

hoary with lichen, red-stained, withstanding the storm,
one reign after another; the high arch has now fallen.

The wall-stone still stands, hacked by weapons,
by grim-ground files.
...



Mood quickened mind, and the mason,
skilled in round-building, bound the wall-base,

wondrously with iron.
Bright were the halls, many the baths,
High the gables, great the joyful noise,
many the mead-hall full of pleasures.
Until fate the mighty overturned it all.

Slaughter spread wide, pestilence arose,
and death took all those brave men away.
Their bulwarks were broken, their halls laid waste,
the cities crumbled, those who would repair it
laid in the earth. And so these halls are empty,

and the curved arch sheds its tiles,
torn from the roof. Decay has brought it down,
broken it to rubble. Where once many a warrior,
high of heart, gold-bright, gleaming in splendour,
proud and wine-flushed, shone in armour,

looked on a treasure of silver, on precious gems,
on riches of pearl...
in that bright city of broad rule.
Stone courts once stood there, and hot streams gushed forth,
wide floods of water, surrounded by a wall,

in its bright bosom, there where the baths were,
hot in the middle.
Hot streams ran over hoary stone

into the ring
posted by UniversityNomad at 5:45 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Also I love this one:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)
posted by Cocodrillo at 5:45 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Two of my favorites:

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water"
-- inscription on John Keats's tombstone (per his request)


When I burned our leaves, a wind from the dark
trailed flakes of fire over the garden,
catching at the last of the beans and sparkling
far away like meteors or a gust of stars.
In the maple tree one falling star caught,
and glowed a long time before it went out.

-- "Looking West," by William Stafford
posted by beanie at 6:15 PM on August 9, 2012


Here today, gone tomorrow.
posted by Splunge at 6:17 PM on August 9, 2012


Time goes, you say? Ah no. Alas time stays and we go.
posted by jessamyn at 6:22 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Blyth says of Masahide's "storehouse" haiku:

Masahide is famous for a very pretentious verse approved by Basho:

蔵焼けて 障るものなき 月見哉
kura yakete sawaru mono naki tsukimi kana

My storehouse burnt down,
There is nothing to obstruct
The moon-view.
trans. Blyth

Now that my storehouse
has burned down, nothing
conceals the moon.
trans. Yoel Hoffmann

Hoffmann says that this poem "was much praised by Basho."

my storehouse burned down -
now there is nothing to prevent
the moon viewing
Tr. Gabi Greve / Fires in Edo

Quote from "The Monkey's Straw Raincoat: and Other Poetry of the Basho School," introduced and translated by Earl Miner and Hiroko Odagiri, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1981. From Introducing Haiku Poets.
posted by pullayup at 6:37 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


All that dwells upon the earth is perishing,
yet still abides the Face of thy Lord, majestic, splendid.

-Qur'an, Surat Ar-Rahman, transl. Arberry
posted by Paquda at 7:10 PM on August 9, 2012 [1 favorite]


Jessamyn, is that a paraphrase of Góngora?

(Rough translation:

If by the stars
I want to know, Time, where you are,
I watch you leave with them,
But you don't return with them.

Where do you leave your footprints
That I can't find your trail?

But oh! what a fool I am,
To think you fly, you run, or you flow:
You're the one that stays,
And I'm the one that goes.)
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:11 PM on August 9, 2012


jessamyn's quote is from a poem by Austin Dobson, "The Paradox of Time", which is subtitled "A Variation on Ronsard" (with an epigraph from Ronsard's poem "Sonnet à Marie".
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:53 AM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


I suppose it's possible Góngora could have been echoing Ronsard, or just a coincidence.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:55 AM on August 10, 2012


With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipped maiden
And many a light-foot lad.

By streams too broad for leaping
The light-foot lads are laid.
The rose-lipped maids are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

A.E. Housman (whose works contain many similar)
posted by wjm at 3:05 AM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


And for that matter, many stanzas from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam fit the bill:

For some we loved, the loveliest and best
That from His rolling vintage Time has pressed,
Have drunk their glass a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest

But helpless pieces in the game He plays
Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days
He hither and thither moves, and checks ... and slays
Then one by one, back in the Closet lays
posted by wjm at 3:08 AM on August 10, 2012


A very specific form of impermanence, but I always loved Captain Beefheart's "Her interest fades like breath on a mirror".
posted by Decani at 3:52 AM on August 10, 2012


Life's a bitch, then you die.
posted by Smallpox at 6:53 AM on August 10, 2012


who are you,little i 

(five or six years old) 
peering from some high 

window;at the gold 

of November sunset 

(and feeling:that if day 
has to become night 

this is a beautiful way) 

- e.e. cummings
posted by nelleish at 7:20 AM on August 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


A boat  beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

(Lewis Carroll)
posted by milk white peacock at 10:32 AM on August 10, 2012


But you asked for something brief, of course. I also like "the play is the tragedy, 'Man,' / And its hero, the Conqueror Worm" from "Ligeia."
posted by milk white peacock at 10:45 AM on August 10, 2012


What is Life ? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass
and loses itself in the Sunset."
-Crowfoot....April 1890, on his deathbed
posted by chocolatepeanutbuttercup at 2:42 PM on August 10, 2012


The coward believes he will live forever
If he holds back in the battle,
But in old age he shall have no peace
Though spears have spared his limbs.
-Hávamál, Stanzas 16,
posted by vorfeed at 5:47 PM on August 10, 2012


Two haiku by Soen Nakagawa Roshi:
Gratitude!
tears melting into
mountain snow

Disappearing
snow on mountain peak
unfurls a rainbow
posted by Lexica at 6:54 PM on August 10, 2012


And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound
posted by kasparhauser at 12:05 AM on August 11, 2012




My favorite:

A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam on a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.

John Dyer, 1727
posted by math at 11:48 AM on August 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


人生朝露
posted by Tanizaki at 5:13 PM on August 12, 2012


The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
-Wallace Stevens
posted by Paquda at 10:55 AM on August 13, 2012


Maybe briefest of all: panta rhei, "everything flows". (I always thought this was from Heraclitus, but Wiki says it's a description of his philosophy by a much later writer, Simplicius.)
posted by zeri at 8:31 PM on December 27, 2012


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