The clocks are thrumming in towers of stone,
The mice are gnawing at leavings of bone,
The trees are stirring still out of their grave,
O fool-headed me, the lowliest knave!
I count by the hour the minutes that pass,
And inside the minute, the secondhand glass;
Lonely a-room by the darkening eye
I sigh thousand breaths, indifferent sky!
How awful the stuff that sits in my head,
Short-simple and dull, the bulk of it dead –
The single flower that fats in the dross
Is seeing the size and gross of its loss!