Poem of the Week: On the Clock

The hands of the clock go patiently
over the story again from the top.
Consider all the years you’ve spent
in waiting rooms like this with clocks

for company, in libraries and hospitals,
examination halls and crematoria,
abandoned on a station concourse
by a lover, with the dial’s unwavering

attention, which cannot be told
apart from its sweeping dismissals.
You yourself have purchased clocks,
such as this working imitation

whose original (that’s not the word),
is hanging from a wrought-iron frame
outside a bistro you have only visited
in the imagination, which the clock

finds inconceivable. So now, the facts,
their inescapable perfection, please,
in your own time. Like the Bourbons
the clock forgets nothing, learns nothing

and unfailingly makes nothing
of whatever meets its faithful gaze.
And if the clock were a believer
this intolerable hush would be

the prayer it says to time. The clock
does not believe, and nor do you.
It’s ten to two. The hands are raised
to count you in. Now, from the top.

Sean O’Brien’s 12th collection of poems, The Bonfire Party, is published by Picador