The Einstein Tram Poem by John a'Beckett

Take a firm seat in the screaming fast Ochota tram, night
tossed in neon light, snow thrust up at a shrinking moon:
And ask if it’s the Einstein trip he did in clockwork Berne
when tramming punctual home from his tock routine job in
the patents office, imagining at 5, a rock in 1912 in June
the old bell-clanker quite kazoom up to the Speed of Light,
observe the low squat buildings squeeze up tight and turn
the stern Swiss pedestrians into Brobdanagians of height,
hands on the sturdy town-hall clock burst into crazy spin
And all the bells of Newton’s Universe unsynched, askew
trip light-fantastical right over their majestic tick and chime
the half-harmonic beat that runs our living-out of time