Second Hand Prague Poem by Andrew Fincham

The clock’s renown
Draws crowds
Into the old town’s
Heart
It does not
Miss a beat
Six centuries on

They come to see
Not oddly
intricate machinery
bohemian antiquity
or
something astrological
in matters horological
nor
urbane aristocracy
in municipal clockery.

Or even
Jesus and his wisemen
And skeletal tolls for Turks.

But on the hour
They gather round
The Old Town tourists
and the stags
and drunks
to witness time preserved
to watch that which
we make no more
Almost the last
Perhaps the best
of the remaining stock:
A clock.

(I wait upon the crowd
And find
within the wonder watching there
much to admire)