The Clocks Go Back One Hour Poem by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Time changes with life and life changes with time.
October grows too old,
Hobbling backwards
With the burden of years,
On the sinuous alcove of time,
Tenebrous and feathery,
Her hidden lamps blinking furiously
At the silhouettes of wasted days.
The wasted leaves of autumn
Break forth and dance down
With the weak speed of burnt confetti.

The clocks go back several ticks,
Schlepping on the tired sinews of
Broken slumbers interrupted by the alarm bells
Which ring up the dreaming souls of boarding schools.
There's darkness upon the face of the dial.
I wonder how the hourglass fared back then.
Passers-by hasten their questionings ꓽ "Fellow, tell me, please.
What is it o'clock? "
Oh, it is late. Roosting time!
"But why so late now when it smells so early? "
The clocks have gone back one hour.
And so darkness covers the earth for three months.

Then March, the bearer of thirty-one offspring,
Sprints with the brio of a restless stripling.
A Phillipedes,
Running from the sleepy west to the yawning east,
Fanning the embers of dawn as he speeds along.

And light fills the world.
The cockerels record each other's crows
In one-strength choir.
Venus is viewed yonder smiling proudly like a crowned star.
And light fills the earth.
The clocks sprint forward,
Ticking with the pulse rate of Ancient Greek runners.

Spring is the light at the end of the tunnel we know as winter.