(An Easter poem for I. A. Richards, Mister Wordsworth, and especially Albert Einstein.)
So. The old clock’s broken.
The ornate hands droop.
The wrung-neck cuckoo lurches out and
Poos a last poop.
Springs are crazy as pinwheels.
Arrhythmia hiccoughs the hood.
The cogwheels patter like hail on the floor
All the time they were wood.
The old clock cracked when Einstein
Crept into looking-glass land.
The faster he dawdled the taller he shrunk;
Steel rules bent in his hand.
Einstein has said, take freightcars;
Take lightning, he said, that’s how.
Not a dial but it doodles and coos:
The human heart heaves slow.
He came back with an angel,
Its voice a spherical chime.
In the corner politer than grandfather’s clock
The angel sings us time.
Round the bright head, velocity
Hurls like a felloe of fire.
Its hands are brighter, tighter than white
Knit knuckles of desire.
All genesis and renaissance.
Half-buried stone and chair
Break from a long Ephesian sleep
Vibrato in broad air.
The clocks old dumpy lovers
Weep but a wandering voice.
Angle (angel evangell)
We at the tomb rejoice.
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