Merryn Williams
New Grub Street
Write, damn you, write! And around him the clocks kept chiming –
the workhouse clock, the church clock at the end of his street –
forever three minutes late – and the clock of black marble
which sat over his head, and had been a wedding present.
Its hand jerked past the fake-gold Roman numerals;
flies buzzed. All through the night he’d heard those clocks.
Between the quarters, small sounds; the complaining baby;
his wife, trying to move about quietly. Doors slammed.
Wasn’t there a man due to be hanged tomorrow morning?
Drink tea, half cold. The clocks. Ten thousand words.
Today, he thought, I will cover four more pages;
his hand rested limply. His fifth novel. Born dead.
He counted the strokes. He forgot the names of his characters.
Tonight, note down another wasted day.
The hanged man would hear the clock in his last few seconds,
all London’s clocks, a cracked continuous song
in the novelist’s brain, and, like the hanged man’s future,
the page before him stretched ahead, pure white.
Page(s) 26
magazine list
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- Second Aeon
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