In the October month of the year 1405 I was cast by Master John called Reber of Aarau. I am vessel and wax, and to all I tell the hours of the day.
      – Inscription on the Great Hour Bell of the Zytglogge, Bern, Switzerland

 

Within the clock tower’s thick stone walls
lies the ingenious machinery
of interlocking wheels, ropes, levers
and knobs that whirr, click, clack and turn,
its rhythm set by a giant pendulum––
the gong of its great bell a testament
to mathematical precision, solace
of clockwork in a turbulent world.

But to the medieval people standing
on the street below––

(behind them the red tiled roofs,
the shadowed terraces and narrow lanes
of the city and, when the sky was clear,
the snowy peaks of the Bernese Oberland)––

it was pure magic as the golden rooster
moved mechanical wings to crow
the coming spectacle, and a row
of wooden bears, some dancing,
some riding horses, some beating drums,
began to turn on a carousel
while the gilded figure of Chronos,
god of time, turned his enormous
hourglass upside down.

Centuries before audiences ran
from the first moving celluloid image,
these automata delighted us
with their almost-human gestures,
their jokes and trickery,
their warnings of death and decay.

Remember as children how we loved
the holy uselessness of dolls
who could open and close their eyes,
whose hair could be brushed and braided,
who could be dressed and undressed,
who were always obedient,
who never complained of mistreatment
at our grubby hands.

We could pretend to love them
as if they were human, as if
they breathed and smiled and wept
like us as we practiced for the future,
clad in our dresses made of time,
ignorant of the sand running into
the bottom of the hourglass,
its unknowable capacity
or its rate of fall.

 

Angela Patten’s publications include five poetry collections, most recently Feeding the Wild Rabbit (Kelsay 2024) and a memoir, High Tea at a Low Table: Stories from an Irish Childhood (Wind Ridge 2013). Born and raised in Dublin, she maintains citizenship in Ireland and the U.S. She lives in Burlington, Vermont.