Clock Museum

Long-case clocks line ancient walls:
transformed trees; survivors proving time's
errant constancy. One strikes seven at four o'clock
with the certainty of tone that poets crave:
words dissolving in a sea of resonance.
Seismograph of oak; split Rorschach of walnut;
the honeyed shine of elm, crudely planed…
In leaf shapes, black traceries
track shadows over silver, point to
three straight cyphers that translate all hours.
Old clockmakers wished time to be
present to us, stand in drawing room or hall
breathing the air of our dramas — lofty yet
patient companions, benevolent totems,
whose faces can hold our gaze, take our measure.
The sombre ticking off of lives… As these
shapers of it knew, time works on weight —
gravitas of flesh and wood and metal,
all culled from earth to be embraced by light,
fall towards the darkness of new origins.