The clock’s renown <br />Draws crowds <br />Into the old town’s <br />Heart <br />It does not <br />Miss a beat <br />Six centuries on <br /> <br />They come to see <br />Not oddly <br />intricate machinery <br />bohemian antiquity <br />or <br />something astrological <br />in matters horological <br />nor <br />urbane aristocracy <br />in municipal clockery. <br /> <br />Or even <br />Jesus and his wisemen <br />And skeletal tolls for Turks. <br /> <br />But on the hour <br />They gather round <br />The Old Town tourists <br />and the stags <br />and drunks <br />to witness time preserved <br />to watch that which <br />we make no more <br />Almost the last <br />Perhaps the best <br />of the remaining stock: <br />A clock. <br /> <br />(I wait upon the crowd <br />And find <br />within the wonder watching there <br />much to admire)<br /><br />Andrew Fincham<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/second-hand-prague/
