Found at the ever wonderful First Known When Lost
Empty Room
The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax.
The clock’s voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats.
The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating,
Loudly, with finger raised, when the class has gone.
But time flows through the room, light flows through the room
Like someone picking flowers, like someone whistling
Without a tune, like talk in front of a fire,
Like a woman knitting or a child snipping at paper.
A. S. J. Tessimond, The Walls of Glass (Methuen 1934)
Séamus Sweeney 