The Pulse of Culture

Biruni cared about calendars,
How other peoples recorded time,
Down to calendars of minor sects.

This was new. And it’s worth recalling
That the reason Biruni could help
Was not only due to the chaos

Of parochial chronologies,
But also down to the fact that folks
Can’t seem to live without calendars.

Some of the earliest symbolic
Artifacts seem to be recording
Devices, lunations scratched on bones.

Before farming, before ziggurats,
People possessed their own
Sorts of interlocking calendars.

In a sense, it’s odd that it seems odd
That Biruni would collect systems
For tracking time in a hybrid tome

Of astronomy and history
And mathematics and religion.
These all intersect with calendars

And human populations follow,
Must follow, some tracking sense of time.
It’s stranger that Biruni was first.

Calendrical time, its holidays,
High holy days, and transitional,
Liminal days of fear and fasting,

Is essential and so essential
It can seem trivial. It isn’t.
The calendar’s the pulse of culture.