Time And Time Again
Or listen to the clocktowers
of any old well-managed city
beating their gongs round the clock, each slightly
off the others’ time, deeper or lighter
in its bronze, beating out a different
sequence each half-hour, out of the accidents
of alloy, a maker’s shaking hand
in Switzerland, or the mutual distances
commemorating a donor’s whim,
the perennial feuds and seasonal alliance
of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim—
cut off sometimes by a change of wind,
a change of mind, or a siren
between the pieces of a backstreet quarrel
One day you look up and see one of them
eyeless, silent, a zigzag sky showing
through the knocked-out clockwork, after a riot,
a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act
Of nature in a night of lightnings.
of any old well-managed city
beating their gongs round the clock, each slightly
off the others’ time, deeper or lighter
in its bronze, beating out a different
sequence each half-hour, out of the accidents
of alloy, a maker’s shaking hand
in Switzerland, or the mutual distances
commemorating a donor’s whim,
the perennial feuds and seasonal alliance
of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim—
cut off sometimes by a change of wind,
a change of mind, or a siren
between the pieces of a backstreet quarrel
One day you look up and see one of them
eyeless, silent, a zigzag sky showing
through the knocked-out clockwork, after a riot,
a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act
Of nature in a night of lightnings.