Les plus lus ▸
Balachandran V
Behind the rectangular glass case
A bent head, lit sideways by a lamp
A lens, stuck into the socket of the right eye
A forceps in hand, drawing out
The innards of a dead watch.
Tickers tick loud
Tolling, the impending doom.
Watches lie about
In various states of disembowelment.
Old, huge clocks hang in the walls
Like Capuchin monks in the catacombs.
How precise! His fingers wield the tiny tool
And stab it into the underbelly of my watch.
I stand still -
My time is at his mercy.
I WAKENED on my hot, hard bed,
Upon the pillow lay my head;
Beneath the pillow I could hear
My little watch was ticking clear.
I thought the throbbing of it went
Like my continual discontent;
I thought it said in every tick:
I am so sick, so sick, so sick;
O Death, come quick, come quick, come quick,
Come quick, come quick, come quick, come quick.
My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the “Octoroon.”
But then at twenty-one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,—
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.