Sasha Fenn's poem is built almost entirely out of questions about time, set between the alternating "Tick" and "Tock" of a clock. The speaker keeps circling the same puzzle: who owns time, who controls it, who can truly understand it? Each answer seems to be no one. Time flies but may never land, runs out but never runs in, and waits for no man, woman, or child, a list that quietly takes in everyone, including those who have "lived for a time."
The speaker sounds restless and a little defiant, poking at old sayings like "time will tell" and asking who "they" are to claim that. By the end, time is reduced to a blunt, almost bitter answer: it knows nothing except how to run away, run by, run out.
The mood is tense and uneasy, like listening to a clock in a quiet room. The final lines make this sharper. Twelve dings, then one more, read like a chime that goes on one beat too long, as if time has gone past its limit.