The ticking of the clock fills the room.
Time conquers the room. Time and darkness,
in which you hear your own breathing, your eye-
lids’ untiring open-shut, open-shut
and – more than you would think – the beating of your heart,
life’s own biological clock, lub-dub, which is much older
than tick-tock, much closer to time itself,
time, which perhaps, really,
is something more than ticks and tocks,
is the voice of someone who has for two billion years
been wanting to say something to you, to life or to matter.
Perhaps this is the answer, one letter,
one syllable in an answer which, after two billion years,
is about to be completed.
*