The Everlasting Hour Poem by David Zvekic

Silence mills about me in my cell;
For a multitude of lifetimes I have languished in this hell
While the shadows cast a vision; the most ultimate of sleep -
In the everlasting hour such time keeping shadows keep.

As that dreamless shadowed keep espied on solitary weeping,
To the side of me a timepiece - all hands spinning and time keeping.
How a humble clock envisions this most tremulous of sleep,
With such single minded ticking-tocking-ticking as I weep.

Seconds waned and lingered near the topping of the hour,
And illumination faded then - a sudden loss of power;
How the second-hand, so weary, all the hours it had crept,
Always ticking, always tocking, always clicking, while I slept.

But unless I am mistaken there could be no loss of power;
No mere sudden loss of power in the apex of the hour:
No more tocking, no more ticking, my poor clock no longer clicking,
Time fell frozen in the stillness of the moon.
-In the suffocating illness of that room.

O! How fitful do I slumber that some minor change in number,
Of the steady ticking-tocking, causes panic to acreep.
Wherefore dark despair awakes me and it shakes me, and it shakes me!
From my solitary weeping in that dreamless moonlit keep.

In the darkness there, awaited I for digits to give chase,
And they should have navigated the circumference of clock's face;
With a baleful eye, I contemplate what always is my case:
To be pushed and to be punished, to be always out of place.

The shading of the shadows, cast such fear upon my face,
While time circumnavigated in reverse about its face;
Held me silent as I waited for a sudden turn to take -
Turn my precious clock a-ticking back in time until I wake.

For the fortune to repair some things that I in err have done,
In my eagerness to win this race I dare not even run.
Could I finish in first place I would give anything to run -
To run a race I can not win; to win a race I can not run.

Shadows shimmer, shake and quiver, as I lose my heart and shiver,
In this cell in which I languish, in this pall of lonely anguish.
I would surely break the pace, if I could finish in first place,
By a second, or a heartbeat, in this ultimate of race.

As my feelings start to waiver there I contemplate the favour,
Of the seeming loss of power in the illness of that hour,
To be pulled and to be punished, to be always out of place,
In the everlasting hour, to the front of me I'd face.

A photo-finish I will finish in this ultimate of race;
In a second or a minute I will surely leave this place;
With a photographic finish in this ultimate of chase -
Die will I or finish first before the ending of the race.

2005