Youth is a bitter mystery even to those who have outgrown the initial perplexity of being young. We thought that being young was synonymous with staying ever at the moment. To the looming presence of time we imparted the same significance as we did the cautious words of our harrying parents – we habitually chose to ignore the warning of an imminent storm, the vague but approaching sound of thunder we pretended not to hear. We told ourselves: what may come will come inevitably; so long as the sky is still vaulted over our heads, we always survive. But survival is invariably an occasion for painful remembrances, from which we are less likely to release ourselves without certain lasting agonies or scars. Dimly we began to notice the flight of time, and we read James Joyce’s words in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with a premature forlornness: “Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.” Time shall be no more but time also etched in us indelible imprints that, ma