John Anderson Poet Lyric

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We Give the Silence a Tick

A clock spring strains to loosen its hoarded time.
Escapement teeth release it, chime by chime.
A seesaw swing—tick, tock...tick, tock... once more—
Its hoard of time released in a measured pour.

“At the third stroke it will be midnight!”—then
pip, pip, pip—counting seconds down until when—
the final pip strikes ‘now’ for every ear to hear—
Time borrows sound to make the moment ring clear.

The battery arrives; the wound spring has to go.
No pendulum nor escapement seesaws to and fro.
The second's hand still jumps across the clock's face—
With tick, tick, tick...the ‘tock’ is now out of place.

We chop the flowing hours with ticks, but not a 'tock'.
Our lives fall into moments, block by block.
If we mute every clock—the moments still flow free.
Time no longer ticks; we give it voice with what we see.

Quartz trembles silently behind the clock face.
Hidden pulses nudge the second's hand from place to place.
No rocking heart now apportions the seconds' flow—
There's still the tiny jumps that show us where they go.

Digital numbers count to sixty, then disappear.
Begin again as though the past was never here.
No circling hand retraces what has gone—
We count time passing, as numbers count up, and carry on.

The atom keeps a regular beat no ear can hear.
No hand needs to jump, no tick needs to reach the ear;
For the closer clocks come to the exact time;
the less they need a ticking face or a chime.

Antennas reach for time; far pulsars answer back.
Their ancient pulses cross the cosmic black.
We raise huge dishes, listening through the dark—
and find the universe already pulses out its mark.

We thought the 'tick' was something clocks had made.
Yet better clocks grew silent with each upgrade.
The seconds now pass as pulses on the screen—
Like heartbeats felt within, present though now unseen.

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