Time

What is time? Can anyone define time?

So many things have been said about time. Like: time is not a reality, but a concept or a measure (Antiphon the Sophist) or that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities (Charles Caleb Colton). The Latins used to say tempus fugit (time flies) - truer words were never spoken.

But my favorite is this one: time is the fire in which we burn (Delmore Schwartz - American poet).

I've read the poem (Calmly we walk through this April's day) a few times but I can't really understand what Delmore meant to say by that.  I can try to come up with an explanation of my own.

We do things because we think it's time to do them. We go to school, we get jobs, we get married, we have kids... Every single thing on this list consumes us like fire burns wood. We leave something from us in all these ... things, until there's nothing left except for ashes.

But wood maintains the fire burning. Time needs someone to measure it. Someone to feel it, to acknowledge its passage, to keep things flashing, flaring...

I think we are tormented by the passage of time. Some of us take more time to realize that, but eventually we all do. We think about the final moment when our time, our fire vanishes into the night leaving a trail of smoke, memories of us.

Does anyone really want to be immortal?