A F Harrold

Watch

I own three watches (two belonged to dead men,
and one’s all my own) and none of them work.
I looked, just now, and saw the time, read the hands
and thought how slow the day’s going. Of course,
this watch is simply keeping its own grip on time,
on a time it much preferred to now: an hour ago
when the sun was lower, when the frost still blazed
and so much more future lay untouched, wide
and fresh to be discovered, like a lost rose-garden.

It’s unhelpful, this nostalgia lodged in the clockwork:
it’s tough on my appointments, tough on my being
where I said I’d be, just when I said I’d be there.
But, I suppose, were you to cut me open, lever
apart the parts of my brainpan to expose the grey,
you’d see (metaphysically thinking) the hands there
striking the same pose: paused an hour ago, a year ago,
or stuck even further back: childhood, perhaps,
or in the midst of some event which never happened.