Stopping Time

It seems that stopping clocks cannot stop time.

I tried it just this morning. Tick, then tock

(you know what’s coming next: another tick,

another tock; repeat until the end

of time). ‘Remove the battery’, said a thought.

‘Stop time’. The irritating din I thus

un-dinned, allowing me some silence. Tick,

then tock. Another ticking clock to stop?

‘Remove the battery’, said a thought. ‘Again?’

I thought. The irritating din I thus

un-dinned, allowing me some silence. Tick,

then tock. ‘How many clocks does one room need?’

I thought. Not three (you might imagine three

was quite sufficient; you’d be wrong), but six.

How many ticks and tocks will leak from

not just one but six clocks? Five too many; five.

I’ll spare you all the details, save to say

that some time later, all the clocks were stopped.

Returning to the task in hand (a poem),

I sat in clockless silence; tickless, tockless

tranquillity. The poem wrote itself,

as poems often do, and when that final

impression on the paper had been made,

I looked towards the mess of clocks upon

the dresser. Tick, they didn’t go, nor tock;

and though I had forgotten all about

the time, forgotten every second, let

each minute pass, unnoticed, into hours,

until a morning had been lost to writing,

I saw that time had quite forgotten all

those clocks, and moved towards its destination,

regardless of the absence of clock motion.

It seems that stopping clocks cannot stop time,

‘though writing makes it vanish altogether

(if only for a morning). You should try it.