Lives of the Watchmakers

Surely there are teeth so small.   

I have listened for their turning,   

this frail swell and fall   

like old blood yearning   

upwards through the skin of days.   

Slowly, I am learning   

their count, though numbers fray   

in me, and the loaded instants   

graft, coming always   

to the same tangle: the distant   

cry merging with the song   

at hand, the rain’s insistent   

opening in daylong   

dryness, the plain moon   

draining into dawn.   

And below it all, hewn   

from the pliant light of some   

Geneva noon,   

they spin time’s thrum.   

Stopped, I have bent my ears   

to them. I have become   

sound inside their years.   

Surely I have known the whole   

of grief and grace in gears.