Time is always tense.

If we could see the whole of time through one
small lens, one single, panoramic view,
we'd see an ocean, broad and deep as it
is stretched. We'd see it wrapped around our world,
and infusing all creation; we would 
see ourselves, frail craft, upon its waves. We
meet with whirlpools, adverse currents, tides and
sluggish seas - not all of time is seamless, 
some runs off in contrary directions. 
We have our landfalls, ports of call; unload; 
conduct affairs; load and set sail: we see
such visions of delight - or we are swamped,
or overturned, receive such frights... and so
we find ourselves in timeless moments, give
our local time to them - we have our small
chronometers; they work quite well(we'll say)
on board, but cannot read the greatness of 
the greater time abroad. Only from the
single viewpoint of the passenger or
sailor do we see time as a ruled line
that connects an end to a beginning 
and we ourselves as plots along that line. 
As many in the past have pictured time 
as circular - the poets  Eliot
and Muir, for instance, believed time past
and present would come back again -, perhaps
we'll find the ocean empties back into 
itself. The old man is the child again,
the buried dead make possible new birth.
Eliot could write about the moment 
of the rose and of the  moment of the yew 
tree, how they have the same duration. So 
time in the whirlpool and beyond our craft
is not equivalent. But still in our
beginning one can find the end of us.
.............................................

My references are to T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding (here) and Edwin Muir's The Recurrence (here) ............................................. Written in response toMary's prompt It's About Time for Poetics (here)