Steam hisses through copper veins…
ticking, clicking, time’s domain—
My child lies still, breathing strained
on tables cold, by gears sustained.
The chronometer counts each beat,
each wheeze, each flutter incomplete…
Whilst I, magniloquent in my defeat,
wind mechanisms obsolete.
Tick-tock, tick-tock…
the grandfather clock
Measures moments I cannot stop,
each second precious… about to drop.
‘Ere in this gaslit surgery,
where brass and steel dance surgically,
I play at God—but can’t you see?
The hubris burns… eternally.
Steam engines pump the bellows’ breath,
mechanical lungs staving off death…
But what am I? A modern Prometheus?
Or just a father… powerless?
The penny-farthing wheels of fate
turn steady, clicking… never late.
Each gear engaged to calculate
how long before it’s… too late.
Glass vials gleam like crystal spheres,
reflecting back my desperate fears…
The music box plays through my tears—
a funeral march… for stolen years.
Whirr-click, whirr-click…
the cardiac tick
Of this contraption… grown too sick
to mend what time and trauma pick.
I built this world of cogs and steam,
believing science could redeem…
But now I know—it’s all a dream.
The clockwork heart… won’t beat again.
The zeppelin drifts beyond the pane,
whilst here I work… in vain, in vain.
My child’s face pale… forever stained
by my mechanical… refrain.
Tick… tick… tick…
The silence thick.
The grandfather clock… has stopped its click.
And I am left… with nothing but…
the echo of my making.
Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.
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