By the hour

In the clock-repair workshop
the ticking and chiming
of innumerable antique clocks, the inter-
locking wheels and levers within each
working busily, moving the hands
across the round faces of time.
(Faces that have kept company
with books, dust and history;
that have witnessed tears, laughter,
the deaths of family pets.)

In the clock-repair workshop
a clock-repair man
gives such inventions
new hearts, new hands.
Each day as he works, he hears
in the chiming and ticking
of the clocks the sound of his own
mortality, of his own living heart
beating soundlessly, rhythmically in time.

He hears them layering, filling
the room, announcing each hour
in parallel (some slightly ahead or behind).
He hears them counting out, dividing
mathematically, sustaining the illusion
of this universe within a room
where time can be wound, is divisible,
is his to orchestrate, is his to mend.

 - Eduard Burle