The delicate hands of the clock Bear such pleasures of a physical nature, The hour and the minutes and their passion come upon him And touch his and lick his face and hands and feet As one might expect from strangers. And vanish inside him bite by bite, Amused by the appetites of the hours ordinary and extraordinary, Pleased they should find him so appealing, His flesh and blood made of the same stuff as time, Light-headed, dizzy, drunken and foolish— Dumbstruck by the minutes of a winter evening, The mad merry minutes of an perfectly ordinary life, The clock is a stranger who has entered the room, Every room in the world without permission And ravaged someone with its tender kisses, Hugged them around the waist, the tightening Of the noose, the tweaked cheek, nibbled ear, the smoothed toes Taking the pulse of everyone by counting thoughts, Subtracting the number of careless thoughts >From the thoughtful thoughts, Which over the years number in the thousands And shimmer up like empty streets in the faces of old clocks On the sides of the buildings he faintly notices Them as he makes his rounds and come to pass Through the hour like a city of many doors, Secret passageways through some lost world—- What time has come that he must gasp And shout and murmur of sad or solemn joy? The hotel orgasms he can hear them As he passes up and down the stairs, They glow in the dark And leap up inside, And when he turns they fly like bats out of his hair. They bristle in the night air And their shadows along the night sky Remark half-hearted of his joy and his despair, Chatter their tender blissful chatter And blithely all time a part he feels shall disappear, Dismiss the hours who are more human For their passing, and more pleasurable For having drawn him so near.© Ernest Slyman
(Originally appeared in Speaking From The Breast)