(They put back the clocks at two A. M.)
TO-NIGHT, I think each sleepy clock
Will lift a pedant's protest to the skies
From many a town's high tower:
— Tick-tock — tick-tock —
Rude hands presume to put us back —
Tick-tack —
One hour! —
Time will not wait, they say,
Nor sun:
Yet is this vast thing done?
Shall the slow day
Submit, the calm moon cower?
O shadowy wings that lean in flight,
O night!
Before your star-eyed birds are flown.
We started speaking,
Looked at each other, then turned away.
The tears kept rising to my eyes
But I could not weep.
I wanted to take your hand
But my hand trembled.
You kept counting the days
Before we should meet again.
But both of us felt in our hearts
That we parted for ever and ever.
The ticking of the little clock filled the quiet room.
“Listen,” I said. “It is so loud,
Like a horse galloping on a lonely road,
As loud as that--a horse galloping past in the night.”
You shut me up in your arms.
But the sound of the clock stifled our hearts’ beating.
Flames flickered in the fireplace,
As memories on the hearth of life;
Two shadows we, watching, brooding,
To catch our reflection
In a non-existent stream.
The ghost-witness of it all,
The clock brings its proofs;
Moments melt into moments,
Like notes of sad music,
Like a white cerement.
Cold memories shroud our life;
Speech flees before this;
Faces turn away from each other;
The fire throws light on them;
There, too, flames burn and flicker.
Let me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool,
on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men
who wash sunlight in their fingers and
enjoy slow-pacing clocks.
When the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks
of direct and cross examinations, hot clashes of
lawyers and cool decisions of the judge,
There are points of high silence — twiddling of thumbs
is at an end — bailiffs near cuspidors take fresh chews
of tobacco and wait — and the clock has a chance for
its ticking to be heard.
A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds
himself ready if the word is " Guilty " to enter motion
for a new trial, speaking in a soft voice, speaking
in a voice slightly colored with bitter wrongs
mingled with monumental patience, speaking with
mythic Atlas shoulders of many preposterous, unjust
circumstances.
I AM glad God saw Death
And gave Death a job taking care of all who are tired
of living:
When all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow and
the connections loose
And the clock goes on ticking and telling the wrong time
from hour to hour
And people around the house joke about what a bum
clock it is,
How glad the clock is when the big Junk Man drives
his wagon
Up to the house and puts his arms around the clock and
says:
" You don't belong here,
You gotta come
Along with me,"
"Through pleasures and palaces" —
Through hotels, and Pullman cars, and steamships . . .
Pink and white camellias
floating in a crystal bowl.
The sharp smell of firewood.
The scrape and rustle of a dog stretching himself
on a hardwood floor.
And your voice, reading — reading —
to the slow ticking of an old brass clock . . .
"Tickets, please!"
And I watch the man in front of me
Fumbling in fourteen pockets.
While the conductor balances his ticket-punch
Between his fingers.