Clocks

HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams. A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands. One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail. And of course ... there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France.

time loss free verse somber

Clocks - context Summary

Published in 1916

Published in Chicago Poems (1916), Sandburg's "Clocks" sketches a series of personified timepieces that register lives and social scenes across the modern city. Each clock marks ordinary and fraught moments—domestic decline, an actress's itinerant existence, a station's public authority—and finally a wristwatch on airmen bound for France. The poem links mechanized timekeeping to human circumstance and the era's social and wartime rhythms.

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