This paper sheds new light on the Syrian poet Adonis and, indirectly, on contemporary Arab thought generally by looking at his conceptualization of time. Contrary to common characterizations of Adonis as a run-of-the-mill liberal advocate for progress, modernization, and secularism in the Arab world, this paper argues that Adonis puts forward an idiosyncratic idea of time that undermines the binary division between future-oriented secular progressives and old-fashioned traditionalists, often used to portray the dominant discourse on the meaning and use of the Arab-Islamic heritage - turath. More specifically, Adonis introduces a notion of time as “creative”, “personal” and “vertical,” as opposed to the linear, horizontal, chronological notion of time that underpins both the conservative longing for a past Golden Age and the progressive open-ended anticipation of a more rational, productive, and better future. Instead, his conception of time privileges personal aesthetic discovery, creation, and re-invention over either respect for traditional values or an ideal of material, accumulative progress. This evaluation of Adonis’s temporal imaginary suggests a different understanding of his place within the Arab intellectual landscape. Rather than adopt a position within these debates, he may be said to reject the familiar discourse on turath entirely. Since the turath debate is inherently diachronic in nature, revolving around the question of how to combine allegiance to a an authentic historical heritage with the demands of a modern future, to suggest a different temporal is tantamount to changing the most fundamental parameters of this discourse. Such a move makes it impossible to discuss or even imagine the kind of discourse on authenticity (asala) and modernity (hadatha) that has been the mainstay of Arab thought in previous decades. Consequently, although it zooms in on the writings of Adonis, this paper also puts forward a thesis about modern Arab thought generally. Where most analyses have focused on detailing positions of various Arab intellectuals within the familiar binary paradigm, it suggests that we keep ourselves from seeing more depth in these debates if we continue to take for granted the particular parameters that have repeatedly been used to make sense of contemporary intellectual life in the Arab world. Instead, it may be more interesting and more fruitful to look how at how individual intellectuals contest the paradigm of turath discourse by suggesting different temporal and conceptual frameworks.