At 8:12 AM all of the watches in the world are being wound. Which is not quite the same thing as all of the guitars on earth being tuned at midnight. Or that all suicides come after the mailman when all hope is gone. Before the mailman, watches are wound, windows looked through, shoes precisely tied, toothcare, the attenuations of the hangover noted. Which is not the same as the new moon after midnight or her bare feet stepping slowly toward you and the snake easing himself from the ground for a meal. The world is so necessary. Someone must execute stray dogs and free the space they're taking up. I can see people walking down Nevsky Prospect winding their watches before you were discovered too far above the ground, that mystical space that was somewhere occupied by a stray dog or a girl in an asylum on her hands and knees. A hanged face turns slowly from a plum to a lump of coal. I'm winding my watch in antipathy. I see the cat racing around the yard in a fantasy of threat. She's preparing for eventualities. She prizes the only prize. But we aren't the cats we once were thousands of years ago. You didn't die with the dignity of an animal. Today you make me want to tie myself to a tree, stake my feet to earth herself so I can't get away. It didn't come as a burning bush or pillar of light but I've decided to stay. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONG OF THE STYGIAN NAIADES by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES LOVE'S SECRET, FR. SONGS OF EXPERIENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE THE SAND-MAN by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR CAROLINA [JANUARY, 1865] by HENRY TIMROD IN THE GOLD ROOM by OSCAR WILDE THE INNER VISION by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH |