T Wignesan Poet Quatrain

Little Clock

for Gertrud Widmayer, my landlady at Heidelberg

Why in pensive ticking, silent thoughts
   You wile your time away
When all around huge swelling bells
   Toll the days away!

Every hour that announced may go
   Your silent hands take hold
And though the ages chimed in ears
   Yours they never behold.

If all the clocks the world had known
   Had struck one strong big note,
They would never still your plodding tone
   Nor the working hearth you alert.

Do you wonder, wonder, little clock
   What makes the grandfather tick!
Or his aching belly in the depth of sorrow
   Cries to the world it's sick!

Thirty million years and Pleistocene dark,
   They are one split second short!
And whimpering suns that rise and flop
   Have scarce stolen your tick or thought!

So, my little clock, my faithful clock
   When I hear the tall town bell,
I'll shrug my shoulders, one tiny moment
   And know that all is well.

©  T. Wignesan, 1957 (from the collection: Tracks of a Tramp. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 1961)

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