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Revisiting the National Collection of Clocks and Watches

Caprar Swire (Malvern, UK)

Liz Berry: A poem as charming as its subject and full of well crafted images.

 

 

Revisiting the National Collection of Clocks and Watches

Just recently, these watches, that I hated

And never wear, seem to me lovely and

Brave. Little white faces, dandelions of

Mechanism, poking themselves washed

White and shiny, up into the stream of time

And wind. Each one of them, a kind of

God, and a kind of Lunatic. Pretending

To some authority of exactitude

Over the uncertain dark. Each a limbed

Moon. A little boy at prep school piping up. A soldier

Singing before an impossible battle. A sweet

Lost heart preferring, rather than submit

To the unspeakable dark, to measure, exactly,

From nowhere to nowhere; to tap out it's tiny,

Disconnected drum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

poem © Caprar Swire