The Clocks
Written for Da'.
When the world was doused with darkness
And the light in the sky was put out with copper snuffers
Stray wisps of smoke wreathed the chimneys
Laughing at the folk who slept inside
The empty houses
With their
Curtains drawn
A poet sat on a hill beneath a tree above a town
And, lord of what he saw,
Was ruler of all the town, but had not in his possession
A single tree
He wrote blank verse in neat handwriting on a lined-paper page
And told the heavens
What he thought about them
And
It was all compliments, but they never smiled
A fool slept in a haybarn in the town
Warm and dry and safe
Though the sky was put out for the night, he was dreaming of
Light
And of the clean wind of the ocean where once
By forgetting to get off the cart at the right city
He went to the seaside
And spent a day in the foam with his trouser cuffs rolled up
And felt the sand between his toes
But he would never do it again, for
He had to work to get home again
A wife watched her husband sleeping beside her in the town
On a pillow, where their hair
(Unbound and uncut) spread
Across the pillow until the two shades of brown that were the same
Melted into one moment of a rippling
Torrent
She wept into her hands to see him smile in his sleep
And know she was awake
But he looked so happy that she broke her heart
With joy
An artist painted in the dark outside the town
Surrounded by a ring of
Mushrooms, where they sprang up overnight to keep out the
Wolves
The magic seemed to pretend to be stronger that the real world outside
Where she put her hands out and took hold of air
But inside her circle, there was only
Handfuls
Of dripping paint to hold on to
Between the round white mushrooms, tall thin grass grew
And she tried to paint the world in the dark
Though it was doused with darkness
But
She only painted Night
A gipsy stood guard over his caravan beside the town
Standing in another circle, but of painted wooden walls
And thick cloth tents
Where all was warm and promised home
And sometimes he looked over to the walls to read the writings
Written only by men's hands, not angels'
Among
The breathing of many bodies
He picked out the sound of his son, soft and sweet
And recalled clever black eyes
And a faerie's hands
Picking swollen, half-rotted berries in a field of spiky grass
A serving-girl brushed her hair in the moonlight by her window in the town
Letting her working hands feel soft
For a slight moment, touching chestnut curls
Fifty strokes, and then one-hundred; a goddess or a queen by moonlight,
Lamplight
With a silken chemise and a lovely smile
Waiting for a moonlight caller
For she believed in such things, though she was fully thirty-two
And too old for dreaming
An old man stood in a clock shop beneath the town
A son, a brother, a father, a grandfather
With too many
Little hands to wave at him when he walked through town than
Could be counted
And in the clock shop, he carved clocks with faces
And little hands, waving, waving
When the sun was high or when the world was doused with darkness
Waving in the sun or in the dark
He promised gold clocks to the hands, and clocks that
Sang on the hour
Clocks that laughed and clocks that ticked, tired of being
Time in a box
So he put on his spectacles and sat at his table, thinking of waving hands
And carved in the darkness, with a candle
And a thin knife
Carved poets and fools and wives and artists
Gipsies and maids and old men
And they all belonged to him, they and all their waving
He smiled solemnly in the candlelight: they
All belonged to him
And in all the world, doused with a bucket of darkness
No, there was no one who knew
That an old man was smiling
--Solemnly--
In the candlelight
And though
The light in the sky was put out and stray wisps of smoke
Still wreathed the chimneys
Laughing at the folk who slept inside the
Empty houses
With their curtains drawn
Neither the light nor the smoke nor the folk inside
The empty houses knew
That an old man was smiling,
Solemnly,
And they all belonged to him.
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