Explain the poem "Thoughts on Time" by Allen Curnow stanza by stanza.

Allen Curnow's poem "Thoughts on Time" is in the order of
a riddle, a paradoxical riddle. A riddle is a word puzzle that taxes your reasoning
ability in deciphering its meaning or its answer, if posed as a question. A paradox is
something that appears to be contradictory, incredible or false but is nonetheless
correct, believable and true, for example C.S. Lewis's statement: "One day you will be
old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

For an
example of Curnow's paradoxes, examine the paradox in the final stanza: "Though I am
here all things my coming attend." This is sorted out by recognizing that everyone and
everything exists in time, were built through a duration of time, grew during a duration
of time, developed during a duration of time, yet all things animate and inanimate
attend to the coming of time in anticipation or in progressing dilapidation, like kids
awaiting summer holidays or like crumbling pyramids.

The
meaning of the stanzas are very closely related. In the first, Curnow
equates time with space as in Einstein's title="Einstein's Spacetime. Gravity Probe B: Testing Einstein's Universe. James
Overduin. Stanford University."
href="http://einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime2.html">theory of
special relativity in which time and space are converted into each other. He also
measures time through the markers of a "water-race"
(picture water running or rain water flowing) and the accumulation of "rust on railway
lines," both of which require time duration in which to occur. Finally, he equates time
with usage, which are changes in space over time: "mileage recorded on yellow
signs."

In the second stanza, time is similarly measured by
accumulaion of "dust" and "lupins"; equated to distance within space; and equated to
activity and life. In the third, Curnow equates time with unseen work or unseen forces
and with overt, seen work, both of which occur in a duration of time. He also equates
time with nature, leisure and emotion: "I am the place in the park where the lovers are
seen." The fourth equates time with places and personal
experience.

The fifth stanza introduces philosophical
speculation by equating time with the infinite and infinity, then reiterating that all
things thus far mentioned comprising the world of experience, including personal
experience, are equated with time, thus equating time with history. He then
contrasts infinite reality with human experience that sees
only a minute thread in the fabric of time. He goes on to state
paradoxically that time calls forth past events of time as
"shapes" that were (e.g., archaeological sites; Hubble images; historic monuments and
moments).

The last two stanzas blend as Curnow ends with
cosmological philosophy by saying time carries the collective consciousness of humanity
while time is revealed in geography, family, work and friends as everyone exists in time
and everyone anticipates future time. In a Biblical allusion to the
Alpha and Omega, time is ultimately equated
with the beginning and the end.