THE MOON-CLOCK
(For Alan Porter)
Tick-tock! the moon, that pale round clock
Her big face peering, goes tick-tock!
Metallic as a grasshopper
The faint far tickings start and stir.
All night tinily you can hear
Tick-tock tinkling down the sheer
Steep falls of space. Minute, aloof,
Here is no praise, here no reproof.
Remote in voids star-purged of sense,
Tick-tock in stark indifference!
From ice-black lands of lack and rock,
The two swords shake and clank tick-tock.
In the dark din of the day's vault
Demand thy headlong soul shall halt
One moment. Hearken, taut and tense,
In the vast Silence beyond sense,