Chapter Sixteen: The Final Moment of Eternity

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the nigh-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

There is a clock in the room. The room is in an old, creaking, cob-webbed house as old as Father Time himself, but that's not important. What is important, however, is the window straight across from the clock with its grimy glass that no one cares to clean.

Every evening, the sunset enters this room through the window, splashing its colors across the once-new walls, repainting them with hues of dazzling red, pink, orange, and yellow--then looks at the clock. It looks at the clock, touches and embraces it and brings back the shine that its wood used to hold, way back when the man who carefully carved the intricate designs still lived. The sunset always leaves as quickly as it came, slipping silently though the same window, slithering away into the approaching night, and the clock always stays.

This is the way things have always been.

Occasionally, the moonlight will enter the room through the same window that the sunset does. Unlike the sunset, however, it does not throw itself across the room, coloring everything in its path, but stays in the same spot, emitting an unearthly ethereal glow. The moonlight is much more sporadic than the sunset, doesn't change everything to gold, and gives a sense of coldness rather than warmth, but it comes through the window anyways. Now, under the moonlight's scrutiny, the clock isn't restored to its former beauty; rather, it becomes an unreal silvery form, its own ghost. The moonlight, like the sunset, always retreats in the end, though, and the clock always stays.

It stays as days pass. It stays through the seasons. It stays completely still, even the hands on its face unmoving, not recording the passage of time. And there it still stays, stuck forever in the final moment of eternity.

A poem should not mean
But be.

Ars Poetica written by Archibald MacLeish.