addressing review comments pandas-dev#2

pandas/_libs/tslibs/parsing.pyx

@@ -63,7 +63,6 @@ from pandas._libs.tslibs.util cimport (
     get_c_string_buf_and_size,
     is_array,
 )
-from pandas._libs.tslibs.timestamps import Timestamp
 
 
 cdef extern from "../src/headers/portable.h":
@@ -300,7 +299,10 @@ def parse_datetime_string(
         return dt
 
     # Handling special case strings today & now
-    dt = _parse_today_now(date_string)
+    if date_string == "now":
+        dt = datetime.now()
+    elif date_string == "today":
+        dt = datetime.today()
     if dt is not None:
         return dt
 
@@ -1216,25 +1218,3 @@ cpdef str get_rule_month(str source):
         return "DEC"
     else:
         return source.split("-")[1]
-
-cdef inline object _parse_today_now(str date_string):
-    """
-    Parse special case date inputs - "today", "now"
-    and if present return corresponding datetime object
-
-    Parameters
-    ----------
-    date_string : str
-
-    Returns:
-    --------
-    datetime or None
-    """
-    cdef:
-        object res = None
-
-    if date_string == "now":
-        res = Timestamp.utcnow()
-    elif date_string == "today":
-        res = Timestamp.today()
-    return res