Time
Among many tongues may clang
the bell of ten thousand names.
A clepsydra with veins of blood.
A caravel on a tide of bloodletting
is also our necessary clock, so
the he who is I at the
time lets out my elephantine toll.
Vein of granite, vein of quartz.
Piezoelectric hum wherefore
we cast a tiny ear of water, we
who clang and unmoor our fleet.
Copyright © 2015 by Chris Martin. Used with permission of the author.
“This poem is one of fourteen poems called ‘Time’ in my forthcoming book, The Falling Down Dance (Coffee House Press, 2015). It’s an invocation of sorts, a launch. Electric time, geologic time, sea time: there’s no end to the durational array.”
—Chris Martin
Chris Martin
Chris Martin is the author of The Falling Down Dance (Coffee House Press, 2015), Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press, 2011), and American Music (Copper Canyon Press, 2007). He is a visiting assistant professor at Carleton College and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.