Meditações - What time is it? I don't know

Grand Central, Track 23

I forgot to tell you it's almost time to go.

The sun has distilled its particular worn essence

And the glittering trout is flipped on the bow.  

 

A man asks me what time it is. I don't know.  

I have emptied my purse and wept in the presence  

Of onlookers. I forgot to remember to go

 

Before eleven, when the steely arrow

Shot swimming to its underneath, tense

As a stream of salmon in reverse below

 

The laureled, relentless clocks. The sceptered row

Of columns dreams one o'clock, immense,  

Inviolate. What time is it? I don't know.  

 

This story concerns the night I tried to go—

Though many times I flopped into the silence

Of orange plastic seating like onto the bow

 

Of a lonely ship, and felt my breathing slow.

The frail, retreating stand of columns prevents

The clocks from telling me time and time again to go.  

At my feet, a glittering trout swims past the bow.

 

Elizabeth Skurnick from Check In, 2005