The Clock Makers Daughter

THE CLOCKMAKER’S DAUGHTER

In seventeen hundred
The candles burned low,
And horses pulled coaches
Through frost and through snow.

My father made clocks
In a shop by the square,
With wheels made of brass
And time everywhere.

The rich wore fine powder,
White wigs on their heads,
While children went hungry
And shared wooden beds.

The king owned a palace,
The poor owned the rain,
And soldiers marched onwards
To battle again.

I polished the faces
Of clocks every day,
And watched every minute
Keep slipping away.

I asked my dear father,
“Can time make us free?”
He looked through the window,
Then whispered to me.

“Time changes kingdoms,
It silences guns,
It buries old rulers
And raises new ones.”

That night came a fire,
It swallowed our street,
With flames at the windows
And smoke at our feet.

I carried one timepiece
Away from the glow,
The clock he had made me
A lifetime ago.

Its hands carried turning
Through sorrow and fear,
Until seventeen hundred
Became another year.

The palace still glittered,
The poor still felt pain,
But somewhere beneath it
A change had begun.

For time is a rebel
No king can command,
It walks through a nation
With truth in its hand.