TIME BOMB

The eight-day clock stands on the mantelpiece.
Each Sunday night for years Sid Holloway
has wound it up, his corded neck tight-strung,
his bracered waist-line swelling with roast beef,
the corners of his mouth bedewed with fat.

His hand imparts the energy for ticks
and tocks enough to fill a week. The clock
lets slowly out its gut of tensile steel
and clicks its teeth discreetly, bates its breath
till Sunday brings Sid shuffling back again.

But there's another timepiece in Sid's flat -
a one-life clock that ticks decades away.
Some seventy years ago his parents' genes
imparted power to embryonic valves:
Sid slid from death into the arms of time.

It's Sunday afternoon; Sid holds his chest
where spasms prophesy a second death
and kneads it hard as if he would rewind
his one-life clock. The mechanism's worn.
It stops. Next day the eight-day clock is quiet.