The Church Clock
The Church Clock
Up the fractured vertebrae of the tower,
And every tick and every tock
Is counting those steps and tallying the years.
The black iron cogs in the time-worn clock,
Industrial halos for a myriad angels
Who, synchronised,
Dance tight to the mechanism of Heaven,
To the same primaeval beat
As that vital, skeletal, metal heart
In its venerable body of stone.
The cogs, they govern the wind-blown face
And they talk to the hands
And they bang out the bell over Littlemore;
The woman in the churchyard
Hears its solid proclamation
As she poses flowers
For someone no longer a prisoner of Time,
Of one who heeded the celestial chime
That calls the faithful to Heaven.