I'm not sure how close this is to being finished but I am giving it an
airing and then may sit on it for a while. Comments welcome.Regards Arthur.
(i)
An hour before my train left, I strolled
under the shadow of the great cathedral’s leap of stone.
The close streets warm and gloomy.
An antique shop, the bell tinkled, a step down,
smells of lavender and damp, polished wood bloomed.
Beneath some stairs, half-hidden,
the clock, works housed in black slate,
trimmed with ornate brass, leaf and vine,
intertwined, hands frozen at ten past three,
mute and lost where no sun shines.
Time is understood through motion observed.
Hands orbit as springs uncoil,
potential is expressed kinetically,
declines to a system in seeming stasis, but what was slate
and brass before? And still to be unwound?
The tick of escapement, reciprocal tock,
the flicker of a hair spring,
toothed wheel meshed with toothed wheel,
mechanical division of the indivisible,
Zeno’s slicing of the unsliceable.
I traced my finger through the dust,
looked at the price tag,
let it drop with a soft suck through pursed lips,
squinted at the dazzle of the day beyond
and made my way towards the trains and home.
(ii)
The swish of cars down wet roads
their lights move over my closed curtains,
then night resumes, the arrow flies
across my room, glow of numbers changing,
the electronic toll of the dark hours.
Soft insistence of the heart
and tides of breath beat out my span,
per second, per second.
I shake my hand, deadened by my body’s weight,
and feel the loosed blood thrill again.
The sun climbs over the leaden dial,
stone plinth scabbed with lichen, fast rooted,
aligned to the earth’s tilt
it measures and enumerates
a gnomon’s shadow.
I have watched flies butt and buzz,
eyes flash, wink, fail and dim
birds flit, clouds drift, sands shift,
leaves quiver, grasses sway, seas lap
and rivers run under the apparent journeys of the sun.
A golden leaf taps my shoulder,
the bird-abandoned nut swings freely in space,
swoop of shadow on the patio,
leaf and petal -fall, moons in thrall, pendulous nut,
all evaluations of the same equations.
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