Watching
the Clock
True, it
has to tick and tock,
but for a
clock, that's breathing. Still,
all the
hours of bequeathing
ding or bong
to the air
must come
to seem
the same.
Good
clocks cultivate expression:
the merry
peal when lovers marry,
the
tedious clack for the sick.
But when a
clock looks at life
through
the slits of its numbers,
(however
slanted by x's and v's
or skewed
by the view from the mantel-piece)
it sees
others dance on the sunlit rug,
then lie
snug in bed while the moon grows wilder.
The clock
must work at
chronicle,
chronicle, mark the time.
Nowhere to
go, booms the grandfather,
Nowhere to
go.
How sad a
realization,
how heavy
for the clock!
And yet it
has only the one note
to tell of
its wealth of regret;
to say how
stealthy time is,
how heavy,
but light as if hollow,
impossible
to clasp in the fiercest grasp.
One note
only.
Damn
limitations!
Charlotte
Muse