THE GRANDFATHER CLOCK

A light-green wall I remember,

in the kitchen of my first world

with the pendulum in its box

and hear the large ticking,

the beating out of earth and air

in the spreading summer afternoon.

Time. Time passing, swarming.

Now like then, with this electric

clock in the kitchen, its present stare,

now like then, the spacing of seconds,

even if that other ticking was fuller,

light leaning on airy fingers,

waving with shadows of leaves.

Time. The stare of the beginnings,

afternoons like unending plains,

the fields of grass stretched

in shivers of swirling heat,

in a buzzing entering your heartbeat,

in the flooding sun’s gaze

and the clock beating the regular

instants of its own age.

An age of parents and grandparents,

dignified, moving without pressure,

along the furrows of a kitchen garden,

on the plains where time

has never wanted to leave,

on gravel roads and shiny dust

and the swishing crowds of cornstalks.

Family. Everybody gone now

and time’s countenance just essential,

time’s fist leaning on its cheek

in the rhythm of its own reverie

that is just a passing and being here,

always full and ungraspable

and simple, simple like this ticking

accompanying the pen on the paper

and, outside, the wavering

fingers of a birdsong.

The ticking so at one

with the body of silence

beating out like a stare

filled with buzzing bees,

so interwoven with the texture

of this insubstantial pageant,

so close and ours, both a same

and further sea.