"The past is another country. They do things differently there".
L.P. Hartley - 'The Go-Between'
MR MOORE'S WALL-CLOCK
Mr Moore lived in a lean-to shack
(two-roomed and shingle-boarded) at the back
of the barn where Grandad kept his car.
Clad with roofing felt and thick with tar
which bubbled in the sun, it shrunk
into the lee of the outbuildings, sunk
deep in a reef of marigolds and nettles,
like the shipwreck that tilts and settles,
shapeless and unnoticed. In the long days,
we children wound our orbit round pathways
of cinders, followed the beaten circuits through
bluebells and cabbage-patches, flew
back to the cottages like swifts at sunset.
And the world was one green hill, the sky a net
that trawled us through the seasons. Time
was a circle dance, two hands in rhyme,
turning, trapped, around the Roman face
of Mr Moore's Prince Albert watch. Period and place
conspired: early summer, watch and chain swinging
in the sun; a crowd of heads inclined to hear the singing
of the wheels. Snapping the brass lid shut,
he muttered, "Tempus fuggit", and withdrew. Cut
free from the web, we reeled away
around the orchard tracks. And then, one day,
one June, I crouched inside his smoker's bow
beside an empty grate. Outside the undertow
of low clouds hissed against the single pane,
damping dust, rattling nettles, a long rain
from the east. Granny plumped his pillows, twitched
the patchwork counterpane his wife had stitched
in the days of the old queen. Now he lay
log-still, dream-bound and seventy years away
along the parabola of Vinson's paddock, chasing
Painted Ladies with his cap. Granny ministered, replacing
flowers unnoticed (willowherb and foxglove), winding up
the lamp-wick, slipping the sill of a china cup
beneath his Kaiser Bill moustache. And I lay coiled
in the cage of the hearthside chair, breathing oiled
darkness, ghost fumes of black tobacco,
calcium tang of lime and plaster, scent-echo
of caves, primeval places. And behind the chanting
of the rain, a tenor voice called time, counting
down the seconds: Mr Moore's old hanging clock, walking
across the wall on one brass leg, soft-talking,
like the messenger whose tale is too important
to be shouted loud. Not this harbinger's way, to rant
about decay, the end of worlds. So, doomed,
I watched and heard the hours unwind, consumed
by the oldest story. Mr Moore slept and I dreamed
for the last time. How brief the story seemed -
the fable of the wheel that turns from light
into shadow, from my midday to Mr Moore's midnight.
12:48:44 AM 
|
