Clocks don't understand Time.

If you ask them

(like a mad man)

they just repeat repeatedly blindly endlessly
tick mechanical tock.

Clocks only understand
movement & sound.

As a child
I shocked a clock
by taking it apart
to discover there was
really nothing there.

The clock was speech less
at being
found out.

Death doesn't understand Death
it's just a job it has to do.

Death doesn't understand Death
only humans do.

If you ask it
(crazy with pain)

it can not even begin to explain.

Death tries to draw
a final breath

but it's efforts are childish
...a few meaningless scribbles.

as a child
Death came & asked if I was
coming out to play?

I hid inside myself
until he went away.

Death still
hasn't gone away.

Love understands Love.

If you ask it

(completely out of your mind)

Love will tell you
it's the presence

of someone who without
their presence

the world would not be
the world.

Love is the absence
of Death...the loss...of Time.

As a child
I found

you

just before Death & Time
took you.

I hold
your name

a scrap
of colour

that I still think of
as mine

despite what the clock says

despite what Death says

your name
is Love.

Dónall Dempsey

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/clocks-don-t-understand-time/