Sasha Fenn's "Time, a Sequel to Glass" is a poem that cross-examines time and gets no testimony back. Nearly everything in it is a question. "Who has time?" "Who holds time captive?" "Who can command time?" The speaker interrogates an invisible witness, and the poem's central idea is that the witness is useless: time has no voice, no knowledge and no loyalty. It only moves.
The title is worth pausing on. A "sequel to glass" suggests that time comes after glass, or continues its story. The poem never explains this, but one reading is that glass is what we have always used to hold time: the hourglass, the clock face. Seen that way, the poem's second question, "Who holds time captive?", answers itself. We try to trap time under glass, and the poem goes on to show how badly that fails.
Fenn builds the poem around the sound of a clock. The words "Tick" and "Tock" interrupt the questions like a pulse, and at first they alternate as they should. Then the pattern slips. "Tick, Tock-" is followed by another "Tock-" on its own, and the last pairing is reversed to "Tock, Tick-". The clock that is supposed to be the model of regularity stumbles. That is a neat piece of irony for a poem that keeps asking who can command time, since the poem's own clock will not stay in order. The ending adds to the effect. Twelve "Ding"s fill a single long line, the full count of a clock striking twelve. Then a lone "Ding." sits apart on the page. Judging by the layout, this is one stroke too many, a count that overruns its limit, as if time has gone past the point where it should have stopped.
The poem is in free verse, with no rhyme and no regular line length. Its music comes from repetition and from pairs of opposites. "Time can fly, / but can it land?" and "Time can run out, / but can it run in?" both take a familiar phrase and ask for its missing half. These are the clichés we use without thinking, and the poem treats them as strange. Flight with no landing, running out with no running in: both describe a one-way street. The short lines and the white space between them act like the pauses between ticks, so the reader waits through the silence too.
The middle of the poem gives the old proverb a new shape. "Time waits for no man" is followed by "Time waits for no woman" and then "Time waits for no child, / nor for those // who have lived for a time." The proverb widens until it covers everyone. The break after "nor for those" makes the reader hang for a moment before the last line arrives, and that line contains a small pun. "For a time" can mean a long while or a short one, and here it quietly turns old age into just another stretch of borrowed time.
The sharpest passage is about the saying "time will tell." The speaker replies flatly, "but time can not speak," and then asks the questions people usually skip: "Who are they? / How do they know that time will tell?" The "they" who produce comforting sayings are anonymous, and their reassurance is exposed as empty. The next questions, "For who can know time? / What can time know?", turn the inquiry around. The answer, set apart as "Nothing...", is a bleak one. Time knows nothing "but to run away, / run by, / run out." The verb "run" has appeared before in "run out" and "run in", and now it comes back three times, each with a different preposition, like a footstep that keeps going without arriving anywhere.
The poem is effective because its form carries its meaning. It asks for answers, receives only a mechanical sound, and finishes on a bell that rings once too often. The reader is left with the speaker's problem. We talk about time as if it were a person who could be spoken to, blamed or bargained with, but the poem insists it is only a motion. The mind that does the asking is the only part of the exchange that can feel anything.