Mr. Calendar on the Wall

Brother sun, sister moon,
just keep on shining down;
over homes and fountains, oceans and mountains,
and on our straggly little town.

Three hundred and sixty-five days,
repeated, repeated, so many times;
angelic beatitudes, generous attitudes,
ignorance, idiocy, hideous crimes.

Seasons come, and seasons go,
slow and placid the merry-go-round;
warmth follows cold, we all grow old,
apart from the young that Death has found.

Death and taxes --
damn braces, bless relaxes!

Hey, hey, Mr Sunshine!
sunshine patriot
sunrise, sunset,
the sun gets in my eyes,
the Land of the Rising Sun,
the Sun God,
the Sun King,
Here comes the Sun!

Mister Moonlight, you caught me
Standing alone ...

Full moons and menstrual cycles
are tied to a rhythm of 28 days;
we hardly react to this obvious fact,
and calculate months in different ways.

All right, get ready for some simple math,
divide 365 by the count you have seen;
we're so easily deceived, we have always believed
in a year of 12 months instead of thirteen.

O, the moon in June!
Shine on, harvest moon.
Blue moon.
Moonlight shines upon my bed.
Moonboy. Moondog.
A small step for man.
A giant step for mankind.
Mooning, mooning.

Ah, the bilious moon
like a yellow balloon, rises over the beach;
a bottle of wine, and a girl so fine,
could you bring me two more of each?

Bright-eyed sober or lost in drink,
the sight of a calendar makes me think:
who were the first to figure out these things,
were they druids, masters, wizards, kings?
Long long before the acknowledged four
elderly riverine civilisations,
Stone Age people made calculations
and built massive constructions to prove them:
Stonehenge, New Grange -- they knew!
(such heavy stones ... and the effort to move them).
The ancient Celts had a calendar that blew
the arrogant Romans away. Julius Caesar
pushed for reform, so now you know why
we still have a month that is called July.

August was his successor Augustus,
so that the eighth month, October,
(think of Octopus) became the tenth.
Hey, diddle, diddle! -- they just
shoved themselves into the middle!
Septa is seven, now nine;
Nove is nine, now eleven;
and Deca (a decade) is twelve.
It's so cool, so historically amusing;
so widely accepted, never confusing.
We continue to live in terms of the past
but wouldn't know it if we were asked.

That girl, I swear, was nothing but trouble,
and when she dropped that bomb upon my head
I was physically drained, emotionally dead.
I had to dig myself out of the rubble.

Why -- now think before you speak! --
are there seven days within a week?
Why are there 24 hours in a day
instead of ten? I'll ask again,
why are there 60 minutes in one hour
and sixty seconds in every minute?
I think if you could pin it
down, and wrestle these problems to the mat,
it would be vain to explain
why hundredths of seconds follow that.
Why the hell do we have Tuesday?
(Sunday is "sun" and Monday is "moon")
and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday?
Is there a reason? Hoho -- damn right!
Time to go. I'll tell you tomorrow night.
_________________
Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for. (Jean Cocteau)