Speaker 1: The fog lifts slowest in early spring. From the bench
Speaker 1: below the linden tree, the square appears less like a
Speaker 1: stitch together market place and more like a stage that
Speaker 1: forgot its walls. The benches curve in a lazy embrace
Speaker 1: around the cobblestone terrace, each with the grain of decades
Speaker 1: pressed into the wood. At this hour, only pigeons and
Speaker 1: the resettling of the lake mist trouble the air, and waiting,
Speaker 1: fidgeting out of habit, running the blunt edge of my
Speaker 1: finger over brass letters in the wood, someone's memorial. My
Speaker 1: breath makes pale ghosts as I take out my pocket watch,
Speaker 1: as reliable as the day I left the railway, eight
Speaker 1: years gone, and it still catches and shines in the
Speaker 1: hand like a small bright promise. I have almost thirty
Speaker 1: minutes until hair Ibler is to meet me. Naturally, I
Speaker 1: arrived early. The trains taught me to favor margin and contingency.
Speaker 1: Precisions are virtue. You grow used to excit, blaming even
Speaker 1: to yourself. It's only while stalling for time that my
Speaker 1: eyes wander along the terrace's dusky semicircle of finery. The
Speaker 1: clocks twelve of them stand upright on their iron stems,
Speaker 1: just by the stone path, each dressed with fluting and
Speaker 1: scroll work, Discreet plaques declaring names in gold leaf, now
Speaker 1: bearing patches to the rain. Each is a different height,
Speaker 1: several with faces round and white, others octagonal like little windows.
Speaker 1: Most keepers I had always assumed are the older neighboring
Speaker 1: shop fronts behind each clock. But as the diffusing mist
Speaker 1: burns away, the hands on each clock resolve into something
Speaker 1: more peculiar than memory grants. I raise my watch for comparison.
Speaker 1: The clock before the bakery v Volkov states ten past eleven,
Speaker 1: nearly two hours ahead. The one in front of the
Speaker 1: bookseller's window says not yet a quarter past nine. Another,
Speaker 1: shaded by the awning of a tailor, points just before three.
Speaker 1: At first I think little of it. Outdoor clocks, perhaps
Speaker 1: a few fallen behind, one left unwound, municipal budget shrunk.
Speaker 1: But as a procession of townspeople begins to flow through
Speaker 1: the square, I notice no one gives these disagreements a
Speaker 1: second glance. M m Me Vulcan bustles out, clutching two
Speaker 1: trays of fresh rolls, checks her clock, and grins over
Speaker 1: her shoulder to some one who waves from near the
Speaker 1: barber s. A young deliveryman in a navy jacket dismounts
Speaker 1: his bicycle, looks straight up at the dial nearest, and
Speaker 1: barks her cheery not a minute late. The cobbler, leaning
Speaker 1: on his broom, calls back, if you say so, lucas,
Speaker 1: not by my reckoning. There's laughter, shuffling, and a roostered
Speaker 1: chorus of chimes at not quite unison, as each metal
Speaker 1: throat strikes a different hour. The sound is a confusion overlapping,
Speaker 1: redundant but not cacophonous. No two clocks sound off together,
Speaker 1: yet every peal seems to spur a little ripple of
Speaker 1: purposeful motion. Children ambling along with backpack shift their speed.
Speaker 1: Shop doors open or close, Cafe chairs scrape or settle.
Speaker 1: I'm unused to irregularity masquerading as order. My own sense
Speaker 1: of time steadies me. The pocket watch, a relic of
Speaker 1: time tables and single points of reference, insists it's just
Speaker 1: gone half past ten. No one else so much as
Speaker 1: glances toward a central tower. There isn't one. The only
Speaker 1: public time offered here is whichever clock stands before you,
Speaker 1: and in every direction that answer changes. My thumb flits
Speaker 1: across the ridges of my watch case as I count
Speaker 1: shops ringing the terrace, a cobbler, a bakery, a bookseller,
Speaker 1: a barber, a florist, a stationer, a tailor, a chemist,
Speaker 1: a greengrocer's, a small post office, a tobacconist, and a
Speaker 1: little cafe, each crowned by its own clock, shielded by
Speaker 1: carved wood or parted branches. It occurs to me that
Speaker 1: I've never seen two clocks here show the same time.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I'd noticed a lag or jump. But to day,
Speaker 1: with minutes to spare and curiosity growing bouquets in the
Speaker 1: cracks of my mind, I try to fix the differences,
Speaker 1: to chart a logic. Maybe the clocks run a few
Speaker 1: minutes apart by accident, may be the hands drifted over
Speaker 1: a season of neglect. But some are faster, others slow.
Speaker 1: The one over the post office is nearly dusk face
Speaker 1: gold even in this mist, while the tobacconist's clock claims
Speaker 1: a bright mid day. The square has always been proud
Speaker 1: of its modesty. No boasting city clock tower, no grand bell.
Speaker 1: The good folk here cling to old ways, handwritten notices,
Speaker 1: petunias edging the street, bread still kneaded at dawn, patients
Speaker 1: trained in gardens and routine. Yet here in the heart
Speaker 1: of things, the measure of ours is a matter of
Speaker 1: personal loyalty. I glance up at M. M. E. Volkov,
Speaker 1: she standing proudly behind her counter. As the morning que
Speaker 1: grows from inside, the faint chime of her clock rings again,
Speaker 1: a whims double peel. She nods to the next customer,
Speaker 1: eyes beaming beneath flowery brows, and calls good noon, Anna, Noon.
Speaker 1: My watch is indignant around us, the square hums. At
Speaker 1: the barber shop, a customer gets up, waves and sweeps
Speaker 1: a rainfall of silver hair from his lap. The barber
Speaker 1: checks his own clock, shakes a strip of cape in
Speaker 1: the sunlight, and points out a spot for the next
Speaker 1: in line. Everyone seems to act with the secret surety
Speaker 1: that their own keeping of time is correct, Yet glancing
Speaker 1: across the square, their neighbors live out a quite separate hour.
Speaker 1: Har Ibler is nowhere in sight. I close my watch, suddenly,
Speaker 1: uncertain whether I'm early or late, and try to catalog
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing. These clocks, so proud, so meticulously maintained,
Speaker 1: are not arranged as decoys or museum pieces. Each seems
Speaker 1: functional and sacred to its keeper, disconnected from any coordination.
Speaker 1: I can discern instead every sequence, the opening of a shop,
Speaker 1: the arrival, delivery, the banter of children, seems to orbit
Speaker 1: around a different star. I cannot think it a mere
Speaker 1: village joke. Not even the slightest local would maintain such
Speaker 1: an elaborate game. Year after year, I watch as two
Speaker 1: shopkeepers consult their clocks, one calling the hour, the other
Speaker 1: answering with a time neither would recognize from a radio
Speaker 1: or phone. The market van pulls up, its driver, guided
Speaker 1: by the butcher's clock, and is greeted without a hint
Speaker 1: of confusion. If this is tradition, it's the best kept
Speaker 1: secret in town. If neglect, then it has achieved a
Speaker 1: harmony all its own. My own habit, honed by years
Speaker 1: on the railway, is to search for regularities. A puzzle
Speaker 1: in time must have origin, purpose, error, or at least
Speaker 1: mutual agreement. But here on the clockmaker's terrace, the only
Speaker 1: consensus is in the disregard for consensus itself. I lean
Speaker 1: back notebook perched on my knee, and resolved to stay,
Speaker 1: to watch, to ask. It isn't a question of whether
Speaker 1: some thing is wrong with the clocks. It's whether anything
Speaker 1: is wrong at all, or if the familiar is quietly
Speaker 1: stranger than I've ever let myself believe. Muffled laughter calls
Speaker 1: me back. Mmemi Volkov, bending to sweep crumbs from a
Speaker 1: threshold waves. When she notices me watching, expecting company, her rheinhard.
Speaker 1: Her voice carries warm and round. You're early or perhaps
Speaker 1: very late, depends who you ask. I wave my pocket
Speaker 1: watch at her. By city time, I'm almost exactly on schedule.
Speaker 1: She tosses her head and gestures to her clock face,
Speaker 1: resplendent in its carved sunbursts. Ah, but that is a
Speaker 1: railway watch, is it not. Bread is meant for mouths,
Speaker 1: not for measurements. She disappears inside, humming an aria. The
Speaker 1: square is alive with arrivals and departures, yet every rhythm
Speaker 1: is set by an hour that waltzes on its own beat.
Speaker 1: I decide, at last to map this contradiction, not with skepticism,
Speaker 1: not with a sense of trespassing into some provincial joke,
Speaker 1: but as an act of respect for the unexplained. This place,
Speaker 1: after all, has cultivated its own time. Maybe now so
Speaker 1: will I I open my note book ink still cool
Speaker 1: from the morning air, and mark clock one Bakery eleven twelve,
Speaker 1: then glancing across the semicircle clock two Bookseller nine fourteen,
Speaker 1: all the way around the Cobbleston's Gentle Arc twelve clock's
Speaker 1: twelve hours, none quite agreeing, not one in sympathy. It
Speaker 1: is in this uncertainty that I feel the smallest spark
Speaker 1: of delight, not confusion, delight, some secret order glints just
Speaker 1: beneath the familiar, waiting patient. As ever the best mysteries
Speaker 1: do her Ibler was always the late comer, though he
Speaker 1: would contest it. The old conductor loved the anticipation of entry,
Speaker 1: the sense of time rippling outward from a station to day.
Speaker 1: He is nowhere in sight. In the meantime, I watch
Speaker 1: the terrace, the clocks mark twelve unrelated destinies. Shopkeepers bustle
Speaker 1: and argue, as if time were a matter only for
Speaker 1: private keeping, a custom, a packed or a tolerated error. Still,
Speaker 1: the square runs like a clockwork of its own. The
Speaker 1: Linden trees just beginning to leaf filter the light in
Speaker 1: a steady gold. School children skip from one shop to
Speaker 1: the next, their progress marked by competing bells, and the
Speaker 1: occasional scold from a parent, now and then a shopkeeper.
Speaker 1: Missus Blum, the florist, her arms a cradle for blooms,
Speaker 1: steps outside to check her dial, shouts an instruction to
Speaker 1: a helper carrying buckets. No confusion, mars her face. I
Speaker 1: catch the eye of mister Hess, the bookseller, tall and spare,
Speaker 1: arranging spines on the sunlit shelf outside his door. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I say, lifting my note book. Which clock does everyone
Speaker 1: use for appointments? He does not pause, simply glance is
Speaker 1: at his own clock, a modest face set in carved oak.
Speaker 1: Why this one, naturally? Then, Apparently amused by my question,
Speaker 1: he offers a half shrug. Unless you want your bread
Speaker 1: burnt or your post mislaid. Rhinehardt's chimes are always too fast,
Speaker 1: everyone knows. Isn't that confusing? They're all different, I persist,
Speaker 1: He grins genuine not. If you use the right one,
Speaker 1: you'll get nowhere with Volkov's clock. If you mean to
Speaker 1: meet me, His eyes twinkle over his spectacles. He arranges
Speaker 1: his books uninterrupted. A child Anna, I think one of
Speaker 1: missus Blum's granddaughter's tugs at my sleeve. Are you finding
Speaker 1: the lost hour she asks, solemn, I kneel. What's that?
Speaker 1: She giggles, skipping away her pink scarf, a flutter in
Speaker 1: the sun. Her answer, it always comes back in spring.
Speaker 1: Out Here, time seems both stubborn and absurdly malleable. No
Speaker 1: one is lost, no deliveries are mist The shopkeepers thrive,
Speaker 1: and the terrace fills and empties with the regularity of lungs.
Speaker 1: If there is error, it is not theirs. I watch
Speaker 1: as M. M. E. Volkov waves a loaf at the postman,
Speaker 1: who grins and ambles over. They consult her clock. He
Speaker 1: consults his own wristwatch, then nods his approval, though by
Speaker 1: my watch the times differ by nearly an hour later,
Speaker 1: at the barber's, a man SIPs coffee, glancing at the
Speaker 1: tall silver clock fixed to the red striped pole. He
Speaker 1: checks his phone, frowns, then pockets the device, as though
Speaker 1: dismissing and irrelevance. No one is correcting anyone else. Every
Speaker 1: clock is for its possessor and their circle, simply the
Speaker 1: measure of reality. No city time posted anywhere, no schedule
Speaker 1: for the square, nor a broadcast over the tan, just
Speaker 1: a conversational tide carrying everyone but keeping them in separate harbors.
Speaker 1: Lunch crowds gather the mechanic ducks into the greengrocers. The
Speaker 1: tanners passed jokes by the cobbler s, and each I
Speaker 1: now observe paces themselves to their own marker, their own
Speaker 1: keeping of the moment. The mechanical chimes ring again, staggered
Speaker 1: a chorus rather than a unison, shout, each a sovereign voice.
Speaker 1: I turned to missus Blum, arranging foxgloves in a tin bucket.
Speaker 1: How do you ever hold meetings? I ask, notebook poised,
Speaker 1: she grins, We don't, we visit, We linger, we share
Speaker 1: if you wish to find me, you know where, not when.
Speaker 1: That's why there are benches and bread, not bells, but deliveries.
Speaker 1: I protest, she winks A wise deliveryman becomes fluent in clocks,
Speaker 1: or else he's soon out of work. Behind her, the
Speaker 1: school bell rings. A handful of children scatter, shrieking, each
Speaker 1: making for a different shop front. Not for the first
Speaker 1: time that morning, I wonder if the clocks are an
Speaker 1: elaborate joke meant to prod outsiders. Though I've lived here
Speaker 1: three years now, never seeing reason to doubt anything but
Speaker 1: the pastries prices and the florist sense of fashion. Still
Speaker 1: watching the square, now the realization grows concrete. This is
Speaker 1: not eccentric neglect. Every discrepancy is deliberate, or at the
Speaker 1: very least enfolded into daily logic. The clocks are the
Speaker 1: pulsing heart of the terrace, and those who orbit them
Speaker 1: do so by their own times. I breathe in slow.
Speaker 1: The gentle unease is less of discomfort and more a
Speaker 1: tickling on the nape of the mind. If no two
Speaker 1: clocks agree, and yet everything in the square continues without confusion,
Speaker 1: what truly is time here? I resolve not merely to watch,
Speaker 1: but to test. The first experiment is simple. I arrange,
Speaker 1: as I would have for the railway to meet har
Speaker 1: Ibler at ten o'clock sharp by my pocket watch, I
Speaker 1: jot down the hour on a slip for myself, another
Speaker 1: on a scrap meant for him, delivered via missus Blum,
Speaker 1: who smiles at my fuss. That's a railway watch. Why
Speaker 1: not use a real clock, she quips, pointing to her
Speaker 1: own petals painted about the clock face. We follow ours.
Speaker 1: It has never yet missed a blossoming. The day brightens
Speaker 1: as clouds tear and I perch on the bench, scanning
Speaker 1: the square, watching my watch tick the final three minutes
Speaker 1: to ten. I stand no sign of Ibler. I stride
Speaker 1: to the bakery to ask after him, though my watch
Speaker 1: is punctual to the minute. Inside, the air is heavy
Speaker 1: with risen bread and a metallic note from the chime overhead.
Speaker 1: M m Me Volkov turns, dusts her hands and waves
Speaker 1: me forward. I'm waiting for her Ibler. I explain, by
Speaker 1: my watch, it's exactly ten, She snorts, nodding at her clock,
Speaker 1: past eleven. Here, you're very late, but he hasn't arrived.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he's still on Blums time. A customer behind me,
Speaker 1: a wiry man in a green apron with a carpenter's hands,
Speaker 1: adds you or early, it's not hardly nine. By Hesse's
Speaker 1: chapter House, each answer delivered with casual assurance contradicts not
Speaker 1: only my watch, but each other. I step out, resolved,
Speaker 1: stealed by practical confusion. Mister Hess is at his table,
Speaker 1: eyes upon the bindings of a battered volume. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: did you see ebla? He checks his clock, shakes his
Speaker 1: head past nine, still early. He usually arrives just as
Speaker 1: my clock reads noon. For a pastry. He winks, as
Speaker 1: though this is a known and settled truth. I glance
Speaker 1: down the terrace. The sun's position feels wrong for even
Speaker 1: one of these. The clocks are not marching together, nor
Speaker 1: evenly apart. There is no slow drift from a master clock,
Speaker 1: but a wild garden of disagreements summoning the conductor's gravity.
Speaker 1: I spent forty years perfecting. I display my pocket watch
Speaker 1: to m m Me Volkov, to Hess, to missus Blumm.
Speaker 1: Look for consistenty's sake, My watch says, The numbers glare
Speaker 1: precisely ten O three. M m Me Volkov simply shakes
Speaker 1: her head. That's a railway watch, Yes, but it's for railways.
Speaker 1: Here bread is bread, and minutes can bake or freeze
Speaker 1: as they see fit. Mister Hes nods, as if confirming
Speaker 1: a natural law. If you try to follow all clocks,
Speaker 1: you chase ghosts. Pick one, preferably the right one. He laughs.
Speaker 1: Missus Blum teases, why not trust a flower? Ours never
Speaker 1: misses spring. The square accepts this blanket, woven among its
Speaker 1: own logic. People consult their clocks, refer to my or
Speaker 1: hour hour, and somehow life carries on. No mist appointments,
Speaker 1: No confusion, just a natural, untroubled certainty. Even without agreement,
Speaker 1: deliveries occur. The butcher's van lumbers in unloads to the
Speaker 1: bakery at a time m m me Volkov claims as
Speaker 1: just on time nearly mid day by her clock, hours
Speaker 1: off from the neighbors. Later, a cart arrives for the bookseller,
Speaker 1: the driver stating, right when you said, as Hesse's clock
Speaker 1: shows nearly quarter to ten. I try again, this time
Speaker 1: arranging with Hesse and Blum to meet for coffee on
Speaker 1: the hour. Each refers to their own clock's hour. Each
Speaker 1: arrives at a different time by my pocket watch. They
Speaker 1: greet each other fondly, AH rite on time, the phrase
Speaker 1: exchanged with no awareness of contradiction. The more I press,
Speaker 1: the more unshakable their certainty. No one refuses to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the inconsistency. It simply isn't a matter for concern. My
Speaker 1: skepticism gutters, then turns curious. How do the clocks coordinate
Speaker 1: if at all? Is there an annual correction, a village reset?
Speaker 1: I don't know? Or is this a living practical paradox
Speaker 1: endorsed by the entire square out of habit or mischief.
Speaker 1: Before returning to my bench, I slip my pocket watch
Speaker 1: from my wayaistcoat and leave it gently ticking on the
Speaker 1: stones beside the nearest terrace clock. I pace the square,
Speaker 1: resolve to return in ten minutes. When I pick it up,
Speaker 1: I notice the minute hand has drifted, but not by
Speaker 1: ten minutes. Closer examination reveals an oddity. My watch is
Speaker 1: now oddly faster, matching the bakery clock's time almost exactly,
Speaker 1: despite leaving it beside the booksellers. I correct it, wind
Speaker 1: it against city time, reset the hands, then walk nearer
Speaker 1: the florist's clock, and feel faintly a tension beneath my palm,
Speaker 1: as if the mechanism's desire lay elsewhere. I try my phone.
Speaker 1: It offers the correct digital time per the city's radio signal,
Speaker 1: but as I leave it near the florist's clock, it
Speaker 1: too shivers and resets itself once not a dropped second,
Speaker 1: minutes leap or falter, and only when pocketed again does
Speaker 1: it resume. The city's timetable mapping becomes my new pastime.
Speaker 1: Each clock, each hour, I record its discrepancy, sometimes minutes ahead,
Speaker 1: sometimes hours are drift, but no matter where I wander
Speaker 1: the shops maintain their business. None are ever late, none
Speaker 1: ever close at the wrong moment, no matter which hour
Speaker 1: their own clock claims, festive banners appear. A poster, printed
Speaker 1: at least ahead of next week's market day is nailed
Speaker 1: to the Linden Tree Market sundown Thursday. I ask M. M. E. Volkov,
Speaker 1: whose clock marks sundown. She waves a hand dismissively. Everyone's
Speaker 1: when it's time. It's always time. The more carefully I watch,
Speaker 1: the clearer the contradiction becomes. The clocks discrepancies don't shift randomly.
Speaker 1: Each follows its own drift, but neither does any ever
Speaker 1: fall fully into line with another. Later, while noting entries
Speaker 1: in my note book, I watch two shopkeepers, the greengrocer
Speaker 1: and the bookseller, each waiting on the dairy van. Each
Speaker 1: expects it at a different time, one at half past seven,
Speaker 1: the other nearly ten. Yet the van arrives twice, or
Speaker 1: so it seems. The same driver in the same uniform,
Speaker 1: makes two rounds. In one encounter, he nods at the greengrocer,
Speaker 1: drops off two crates, and then a handful of minutes
Speaker 1: later repeats the performance at Hess's, which by all logic
Speaker 1: should have already occurred. Curiosity overwhelms politeness, and after the
Speaker 1: second visit, I flag the driver, excuse me, were you
Speaker 1: just here at the greengrocer? S? He frowns, shrugs, and
Speaker 1: lifts his docket. Of course, delivered at seven twenty by
Speaker 1: their clock, and here now on time as well. His
Speaker 1: eyes flick to the bookseller's clock. Why it's nothing, I stammer,
Speaker 1: realizing the futility and pressing him. He moves on indistinct.
Speaker 1: Among the day's routines, I watch as two neighbors m M. E.
Speaker 1: Volkov and Missus Blum arranged to meet for afternoon tea
Speaker 1: at three. The three occurs at different times by my watch,
Speaker 1: but each in her own way calls the other punctual
Speaker 1: as always. As I continue my observations, I try to
Speaker 1: triangulate the effect, arranging as a sort of experiment to
Speaker 1: meet with the bookseller and the barber at the same moment.
Speaker 1: I record each appointment, confirm the clocks, and arrive at
Speaker 1: each per their preferred reckoning. To my mounting wonder, I
Speaker 1: experience each meeting as immediate, despite the discrepancy. Each recalls
Speaker 1: our plan as on schedule when I challenge their sequence,
Speaker 1: but weren't you with Hess just now? Missus Blum simply shrugs.
Speaker 1: That was then, this is now both right. No one
Speaker 1: admits confusion. Contradictions pass like the harmless eddies of conversation,
Speaker 1: noticed perhaps, but always accepted with a smile. I grow
Speaker 1: bolder mapping discrepcies across days. The clocks never synchronize. Their
Speaker 1: drift is neither progressive nor patterned around any obvious rationale,
Speaker 1: neither astrological nor mechanical, nor mapp to the sun's arc.
Speaker 1: Yet the squares life moves with unwavering confidence. Events, deliveries,
Speaker 1: market days, concerts unfolds seamlessly, as though each clock's keeper
Speaker 1: simply knows when the proper time has come. I record
Speaker 1: a market day. The crowd swells in synchrony, with every
Speaker 1: shop opening at its hour. I ask the mare, who
Speaker 1: appears to supervise the festivities under the shade of the linden,
Speaker 1: which clock do you use? She smiles. Here each has
Speaker 1: a right to its own hour. You won't be late
Speaker 1: if you trust the square. Try running things by the
Speaker 1: city's clock. You'll see nothing falls into place as evening
Speaker 1: cools the day I walk the square again, the sunlight
Speaker 1: glances off the glass facings. My pocket watch, which I
Speaker 1: have scrupulously adjusted each morning, now keeps time closer to
Speaker 1: the nearest terrace clock than to anything past my front door.
Speaker 1: My phone, too, gives up once inside the central square,
Speaker 1: reverting to whatever hour the shopkeeper's clocks declare. The contradiction
Speaker 1: is stark, yet in practice invisible. The town operates with
Speaker 1: an impossible plurality. Events occur in harmonies of now, each
Speaker 1: a line to a different hour, none ever missed, No
Speaker 1: conflict arises. The clocks maintain their differences day after day,
Speaker 1: drifting in their idiosyncratic orbits. My questions deepen. Are the
Speaker 1: discrepancies a code? Is it a system arbitrary yet ancient?
Speaker 1: Or is something stranger at play? Late one afternoon, as
Speaker 1: the chimes stagger their uneven calls ten, then nine, then three,
Speaker 1: then twelve, I see har Ibler at last, approaching in
Speaker 1: a long blue coat, his white beard catching the breeze.
Speaker 1: He pauses beside the florist's clock, checks its hands with
Speaker 1: the gravity of a former conductor, then strides to my bench.
Speaker 1: The squares chaos swirling undisturbed around us, always early. Aren't
Speaker 1: you reinhard? He chides not unkindly. Some things don't change.
Speaker 1: I smile, offering my note book. By which clock would
Speaker 1: you like to begin? He grins, squinting into the slanting sun.
Speaker 1: All and none. But if you must, the tailor's clock
Speaker 1: is the friendliest. Never expects you to hurry, never keeps
Speaker 1: you waiting long. He sits beside me, the two of
Speaker 1: us a pair of retarees with no more trains to catch,
Speaker 1: surveying the square, like stewards of an invisible, impossible order.
Speaker 1: Tell me, Ibler, how did this come to be? You
Speaker 1: remember when timetables were a matter of pride, He leans back, Oh, schedules, yes,
Speaker 1: but even then, each local station kept its own time. Eh,
Speaker 1: before the era of wireless and the single pulse. Perhaps
Speaker 1: this is sanity restored, a democracy of clocks, or maybe
Speaker 1: the quirk of old guilds. I once heard it was
Speaker 1: to keep the baker from and burning his bread, or
Speaker 1: the postmistress from closing too soon on Fridays. He taps
Speaker 1: his nose in mock mystery, but his tone is fond.
Speaker 1: It works, does it not. I leaf back through my notebook,
Speaker 1: showing him columns of times for the same event, a delivery,
Speaker 1: a concert, a birthday, but each recorded differently by each
Speaker 1: shop's reckoning. Strangely, the townsfolk's memories match whichever clock belongs
Speaker 1: to them. Divergent, but convinced there must be a trick,
Speaker 1: I insist, Yet, no matter how I chart appointments, neither
Speaker 1: confusion nor delay ever appears. Ask any shopkeeper the hour
Speaker 1: a picnic began, and you'll get twelve different answers, but
Speaker 1: always the right one, according to their own recollection. Her
Speaker 1: Ibler laughs, crinkling all the lines around his eyes. Press
Speaker 1: too hard, and you'll not find an answer. The city
Speaker 1: sets its clocks, the square sets its heart. Perhaps it's
Speaker 1: better this way, each moment rightly owned. But pressing is
Speaker 1: what I know best. The more I try to reconcole
Speaker 1: the contradictions, the more elusive they become. When I point
Speaker 1: out the impossibility, people shift their answers gently, as though
Speaker 1: the act of questioning makes their memories supple. The recollected
Speaker 1: time of an event flexes and settles, fitting the clock
Speaker 1: the shopkeeper refers to at that moment. It's not merely
Speaker 1: that the clocks are wrong, or late, or left to whim.
Speaker 1: I realize the clocks aren't misaligned markers. Each in some
Speaker 1: fashion anchors a personal reality. Their streams of hours shape
Speaker 1: not just the keeper's day, but the flow of anyone
Speaker 1: interacting in their domain. Watching closely, I see it's not
Speaker 1: a simple trick of overlapping schedules. The entire terrace moves
Speaker 1: on a paradox of punctuality, a dance in which every
Speaker 1: person steps in time to a different measure, yet without
Speaker 1: ever missing a beat. On a whim, I decide to
Speaker 1: put this to a final, most rigorous test. I arrange
Speaker 1: for the following day four meetings with four different shopkeepers
Speaker 1: M M. E. Volkov, mister Hess, Missus Blum, and the cobbler,
Speaker 1: each at the same time, according to their respective clocks.
Speaker 1: I keep my old note book ready, compare my watch
Speaker 1: at every shop's door. At each meeting, I'm welcomed as
Speaker 1: right on time. At each the conversations unfold as if
Speaker 1: happening in parallel, a simultaneity that by my own experience
Speaker 1: is sequential, but in the recollections of each occupies now distinctly.
Speaker 1: As the last appointment finishes and I loiter at the bench,
Speaker 1: I see the same dairy deliver um and cross the
Speaker 1: square he greets another van driver and for a moment
Speaker 1: the two paws at the fountain's edge, each unloading crates.
Speaker 1: I approach, asking if they've met before. Of course, says
Speaker 1: the first, cheerfully, barely five minutes ago. The second, frowning
Speaker 1: at his watch, declares, not till now, first delivery. All morning,
Speaker 1: I try to catalog every detail the weather. One recalls sun,
Speaker 1: another a brisk breeze, the bustle. One speaks of a
Speaker 1: crowded square, the other near empty. Each memory orbits its
Speaker 1: own clocks, keeping on a final attempt to impose order.
Speaker 1: I stand midway between the bakeries and the bookseller's clocks,
Speaker 1: phone extended in my palm. The device's time, usually unwavering,
Speaker 1: begins to flicker. Digits jitter between the bakery's hour and
Speaker 1: the booksellers, a dizzy oscillation of seconds. As I step
Speaker 1: nearer to the bakery, the numbers settle again, the phone
Speaker 1: surrendering to local time as completely as the rest of
Speaker 1: the square. In all this, the only commonality is that
Speaker 1: ordinary life never stutters. No one is ever late, no
Speaker 1: event is missed. Unlike the brittle precision I worshiped for
Speaker 1: so long, there is a gentle resilience to this plurality,
Speaker 1: a kindness in not choosing one true time. Staring at
Speaker 1: the bases of the clocks, I note something I'd missed.
Speaker 1: Beneath faded paint and moss inscriptions Latin and Old German,
Speaker 1: wrap the pedestals, to each their hour, to each their tide,
Speaker 1: another let every hand mark kindness. The scroll work is subtle,
Speaker 1: but each clock carries its own benediction. Poring over my
Speaker 1: accumulated notes, the revelation gathers unsettling and beautiful. The terrace
Speaker 1: is not ruled by a master schedule. Twelve clocks, twelve streams,
Speaker 1: or perhaps more. For every keeper who ever set hands
Speaker 1: to gear the people's daily faith, their stubborn routines have
Speaker 1: given rise to a unique order, a patchwork present stitched
Speaker 1: not from measurement but participation. Far from chaos, the terrace
Speaker 1: holds a paradoxical equilibrium, reality bending politely to the belief
Speaker 1: that each person's now is right, and the world will
Speaker 1: wait just a little for all to catch up. In
Speaker 1: my own year, I believed in the single track, the
Speaker 1: shared schedule. Now, as evening seeps into the stone and
Speaker 1: each clock embarks on its own twilight, I glimpsed the
Speaker 1: power in many nows, interlocking, never quite a lining, never
Speaker 1: truly lost. And through it all the square beats on,
Speaker 1: the clocks striking their irregular hour, the people on time
Speaker 1: for themselves and somehow for each other. Her Ibler lingered
Speaker 1: beside me as dusk settled over the terrace, the square
Speaker 1: now swollen with the mellow scents of bread and tulips.
Speaker 1: After days of watching, mapping, and questioning, and after my
Speaker 1: latest experiment seemed to confirm that reality here slides to
Speaker 1: the pressure of each clock's claim, I felt the dull
Speaker 1: press of both satisfaction and further hunger. To what purpose
Speaker 1: had all this been shaped? Who had begun it? And
Speaker 1: why did it still persist when everywhere else the world
Speaker 1: had surrendered to wristwatches and atomic time? I asked Ibler softly,
Speaker 1: as the square emptied around us. Is this just a
Speaker 1: memory trick, an old habit grown so deep people? Will
Speaker 1: it true? Or is there some hidden lore I haven't seen?
Speaker 1: He looked out, almost as if reading the question in
Speaker 1: the mosaic of stones and the shadows bending between benches.
Speaker 1: Perhaps both, he said, with a shrug that belonged more
Speaker 1: to philosophers than railway men. But you and I can
Speaker 1: only dig so far as the living roots. It was
Speaker 1: suddenly clear there was more to pursue, and that the answer,
Speaker 1: if it could be called, that would lie somewhere between memory, tradition,
Speaker 1: and the hands that had made the clocks themselves. I
Speaker 1: stood joint snapping in protest, and Ibler laughed, then pushed
Speaker 1: himself upright. If you want the story best, try the
Speaker 1: oldest hands in the city, he said, not here, the
Speaker 1: clocks won't yield more to sitting. He was right. There
Speaker 1: would be no more revelations from circling the square waiting
Speaker 1: for the shopkeepers to cough up a secret they likely
Speaker 1: didn't see as anything but the fabric of life. I
Speaker 1: needed to walk into the machinery behind the tradition, into
Speaker 1: its memory, beyond the surface of present experience. That night
Speaker 1: I found sleep elusive. I thought of all the systems
Speaker 1: i'd trusted, of the delight and safety of the single line,
Speaker 1: the single pulse. What I had seen in the terrace
Speaker 1: was not whimsy, but a stubborn system, more reliable for
Speaker 1: being so flexible that contradictions became routine. Flesh, not error.
Speaker 1: What I wondered, keeps the past as plural as the present?
Speaker 1: Here who had taught every one that their hour was
Speaker 1: no theft from another? By morning I found direction. I
Speaker 1: started with the tools, the clocks themselves, their history, their
Speaker 1: past keepers. The true story of their origin could not
Speaker 1: be just in the present pulse of the shops, but
Speaker 1: in something older. A disagreement, a pact, may be even
Speaker 1: a quarrel. The City Archive was a small cold room
Speaker 1: on the second floor of the rat House, dust rising
Speaker 1: in visible haloes when the sun caught the files. The archivist,
Speaker 1: a man of no particular age and an over long cardigan,
Speaker 1: seemed bemused by my request for council minutes and any
Speaker 1: documents on the terrace clocks. You're the second this decade,
Speaker 1: he grunted, hauling out a rough ledger with his thumb
Speaker 1: pressed on the year eighteen o three. Copied names peered
Speaker 1: at penciled minutes. Here at last the beginnings of the
Speaker 1: fracture that the clock of the baker Volkov is preferred
Speaker 1: by some, while the Tanners threatened boycott later proposal rejected
Speaker 1: to dismantle all but one public timer. Countermotion a clock
Speaker 1: for each trade. Then again no agreement on standard hour.
Speaker 1: Baker's sons have adjusted rivals clocks in the night. Fines imposed.
Speaker 1: The entries had the sly, weary humor of people forced
Speaker 1: to live together and too stubborn to cede a point.
Speaker 1: Maps showed the terrace in earlier days, scribbled over with
Speaker 1: lines and numbers. Festival illustrations from a century before depicted
Speaker 1: villagers posing before the clocks, each assembled by their emblem,
Speaker 1: each clock's hands set to a different hour. Even then,
Speaker 1: no one insisted on unity. I left with half a
Speaker 1: dozen names in mind. M. M. E. Volkov's grandmother, perhaps
Speaker 1: the oldest clockmaker's shop still open at the edge of
Speaker 1: the old Quarter. But first I visited missus Krentz, who
Speaker 1: Ibler had told me had once kept the missing thirteenth clock.
Speaker 1: Her cottage was painted as sharp blue vines coiling over
Speaker 1: the windows. I knocked, expecting the regretful babble of old age,
Speaker 1: but she answered with a laugh so sudden it and
Speaker 1: steadied me. You've come to ask why every one here
Speaker 1: measures with a different stick, she said, before I'd finished
Speaker 1: introducing myself. That's a pastime for the half retired. Come
Speaker 1: inside the living room was a Museum of Lost Professions,
Speaker 1: spools of thread, dried herbs, faded photographs of market days
Speaker 1: on the mantel, A small clock so worn, its etched
Speaker 1: numbers faded to ghosts marked half past two. Her wrist watch,
Speaker 1: I noted, was an hour behind. Which do you trust,
Speaker 1: I asked, gesturing to the clock. She smiled, Both depends
Speaker 1: whose house I visit. Mine I keep, as my mother
Speaker 1: kept the wrist watch I wear for the doctor. She
Speaker 1: poured tea, humming, Tell me what you want to know.
Speaker 1: I want to understand why this persists, I said, honestly.
Speaker 1: How can every one keep a different time and not
Speaker 1: fall to confusion? Do you remember it being any different?
Speaker 1: A pause, She looked at me, gaze clear. Oh, when
Speaker 1: I was a girl, the thirteenth clock stood at the fountain.
Speaker 1: I was its keeper, my father before me. People don't
Speaker 1: like to be told what is true for all. For
Speaker 1: all aren't always present in the square, She sipped her tea.
Speaker 1: In school I learned city time, Yes, we were taught.
Speaker 1: But the square has always held its own. The buses,
Speaker 1: the market, they bend, not break. I remember the year
Speaker 1: we tried running market day to the radio hour. Biggest
Speaker 1: muddle you ever saw, So we stopped, everyone went back
Speaker 1: to their hour, and the world righted itself. Her words
Speaker 1: had the weight of weather, simple, inevitable. What about memories,
Speaker 1: I asked, growing quietly. Bolder people here seem to remember
Speaker 1: the same event as happening at different times, even in
Speaker 1: personal stories. She grinned, setting her cup down. Why not
Speaker 1: I remember two first snows when I was a child,
Speaker 1: one for our street, one for the greengrocer s. Both
Speaker 1: are real enough for those who were there. My cousin
Speaker 1: married twice in a day, first at eleven, then at two.
Speaker 1: We still debate which cake was sweeter. Her laughter rang
Speaker 1: I felt the self consciousness of some one who saw
Speaker 1: his old logic as only politely welcome here. Did you
Speaker 1: ever mind, I asked, Why would I? If you search
Speaker 1: for one moment and say all others are wrong, you'll
Speaker 1: end up alone. Here we keep many my moments. We
Speaker 1: meet where the hours overlap, not where they clash. Her
Speaker 1: words glowed in me for the rest of the day,
Speaker 1: as did the sight of the worn clock, still now
Speaker 1: percolating its private hour in time only with itself. The
Speaker 1: clockmaker's workshop was harder to find, slotted low beneath an
Speaker 1: archway windows, opaque with old soot, only a faint ticking
Speaker 1: giving its trade away. Inside the air tasted like hot
Speaker 1: metal oil shavings, a faint hint of must. Har Ziegler,
Speaker 1: the master was a stooped man in corder magnifiers, perched
Speaker 1: atop his head, like the shell of some benign insect.
Speaker 1: When I told him I wished to compare the movements
Speaker 1: of the terrace clocks to my own, he did not
Speaker 1: sneer as I half expected, only gestured me to his bench.
Speaker 1: Most want these things made to match, now, he said,
Speaker 1: holding up my old pocket watch. But for the square.
Speaker 1: No two clients ever allow it, They say, make mine honest.
Speaker 1: But not like volkov S. Never like that, he snipped spring.
Speaker 1: The older clocks, if you open them, are each a
Speaker 1: little strange, almost as if the maker added a personal tick,
Speaker 1: not just the mechanism, a matter of balance or gear.
Speaker 1: The secret is not in the works, but in the keeping.
Speaker 1: He allowed me to open the back of the watch
Speaker 1: and carefully, reverently one of the terrace clocks waiting on
Speaker 1: his bench for repairs. My watch's works were conventional, a
Speaker 1: railway man's pride, familiar to my hands. The terrace clock,
Speaker 1: though bore the tiny irregularities of custom, a slightly off
Speaker 1: centered ratchet, a cam weight bearing initials, hands made deliberately
Speaker 1: asymmetric at their roots. Would it run fast or slow
Speaker 1: by itself? I asked? He considered it would run true,
Speaker 1: so long as someone watched and wounded. True to what
Speaker 1: you ask He grinned a secretive gap in his teeth
Speaker 1: to the one who keeps it. Try to synchronize them,
Speaker 1: and the square will make it right again before sunriseught
Speaker 1: a sniff of the artisan's pride. Each clock was part heirloom,
Speaker 1: part assertion, but more perhaps an extension of the keeper's will.
Speaker 1: Nothing magical lay in the cogs. The magic, if it was,
Speaker 1: that seemed to hover between the hand, the memory, and
Speaker 1: the daily flow of faith. I left with the uncomfortable
Speaker 1: sense that the more concrete the explanation, the deeper the
Speaker 1: paradox became. It was time, at last for an official account.
Speaker 1: I arranged a meeting with the Mare, a tidy woman
Speaker 1: with iron gray hair and a schedule jammed from council
Speaker 1: minutes to street festivals. She met me in her office,
Speaker 1: a clutter of paperwork and coffee cups. Please, I asked,
Speaker 1: how do you manage so many clocks? Wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: simpler to just use city time for buses for tourists,
Speaker 1: She leaned back, unruffled. You could if you wanted to
Speaker 1: miss all the best things. We tried it once, you know,
Speaker 1: every one too early or too late. Then we realized
Speaker 1: people don't arrive for the hour. They arrived for the
Speaker 1: place and the reason. Our buses, our post. They all
Speaker 1: time themselves to the shops they serve. If a visitor
Speaker 1: is confused, someone always helps them match up. She sipped
Speaker 1: her coffee. In my view, it's tradition, but it's more.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've noticed your own watch plays tricks near
Speaker 1: the terrace. I nodded. She added, It's always been like this,
Speaker 1: and as long as the square runs on kindness, we
Speaker 1: help it along, try to change it, and the city
Speaker 1: goes back to muddle and argument, let it be, and
Speaker 1: every one finds their time as their meant. In all
Speaker 1: these scenes, a pattern coalesced, not explanation but belonging. The
Speaker 1: clocks expressed not the tyranny of time, but the tolerant
Speaker 1: plurality of the town. Still, it felt as though something
Speaker 1: foundational was missing. The story, the choice, the moment when
Speaker 1: time had been loosed from the need for a single
Speaker 1: solid center, Ibler suggested a final avenue. Try hair falk
Speaker 1: at the Statothek. If any one holds the thread he does,
Speaker 1: the square won't yield more. From here I went that afternoon,
Speaker 1: the air turning toward rain, the library's steps slick with dew,
Speaker 1: hair falk spare, grave, with spectacles worn smooth at the
Speaker 1: bridge greeted me with a patience earned only by people
Speaker 1: who live surrounded by the private logic of paper. He
Speaker 1: led me to a narrow wood paneled reading room, laid
Speaker 1: out sheaves of brittle fox documents, gild charters, festival programs,
Speaker 1: even an instructional tablet carved in lapidary script. Do you
Speaker 1: know why the clocks were made separate? I asked, settling in,
Speaker 1: He smiled contemplative, not for confusion, as outsiders often say.
Speaker 1: The clockmakers there were four, from different cities, foreign born.
Speaker 1: Each each believed their origin marked true time. None would
Speaker 1: cede authority. The trades split their loyalties, and the council,
Speaker 1: tired of quarrels that brought nothing but late bread and
Speaker 1: mist baptisms, decreed each would have their own clock, built
Speaker 1: by their patron. But the wisdom was in refusing to
Speaker 1: declare one true and other's false. He pushed forward a
Speaker 1: dogg heard portrait four clockmakers, stony faced, each posed besides
Speaker 1: a clock whose hands were set different. Instead, he said,
Speaker 1: the city resolved. Belief will guide movement. Let each claim
Speaker 1: their hour, Let each clock speak for its keeper. The
Speaker 1: hour remembered is the hour kept. The clocks were calibrated
Speaker 1: not to a single sun or signal, but according to
Speaker 1: the routines and passions of those who wound them. He
Speaker 1: reached for the tablet, its surface worn but legible. Who
Speaker 1: claims this hour keeps it? What is done by one
Speaker 1: is done for all. When remembered, I ran my finger
Speaker 1: over the words. They buzzed with a meaning, at once
Speaker 1: concrete and evasive. But isn't this arbitrary? I pressed? Why
Speaker 1: didn't the system break when more shops opened, when people
Speaker 1: changed trades, when outsiders arrived? He considered, I think over time,
Speaker 1: the custom became more than muscle or tradition. It became expectation.
Speaker 1: Expectation became memory. And now in the terrace, expectation and
Speaker 1: memory are the pillars of reality. It is not merely belief.
Speaker 1: It is practice made world. Each moment is a place,
Speaker 1: a tide, a mark, the clock synchronized not by measurement,
Speaker 1: but by an unwritten law that time here will wait
Speaker 1: for every keeper's need, and no one's experience is trampled
Speaker 1: for the sake of sameness. He looked up, gentle, you
Speaker 1: recall meeting Ibler yesterday? Yes? Was it morning or noon?
Speaker 1: It was both, I admitted, startled to hear it spoken.
Speaker 1: Here you begin to live with the contradiction. The mind flexes,
Speaker 1: reality bends politely. For the square. Time is not a
Speaker 1: spine but a braid. I felt truly a shift, as
Speaker 1: if the clack of points beneath the rails had thrown
Speaker 1: me onto a new line. My own memories of the
Speaker 1: Terrace's days began to gently fracture. I saw myself meeting
Speaker 1: Ibler before the bakery, then again beside the florist, each
Speaker 1: equally present, neither erasing the other, more than illusion, less
Speaker 1: than madness, Not a trick of the mind, but a
Speaker 1: new law written by centuries of generous plurality. Was it
Speaker 1: ever challenged, I asked, voice hushed. Once during the Wars,
Speaker 1: some demanded a single watchword a city's schedule. It failed,
Speaker 1: people lost one another, shops floundered. It took a generation
Speaker 1: to restore the habit. He tapped the carved tablet. These
Speaker 1: ground rules are not magic nor law. They are persistent,
Speaker 1: collective choice, made smooth by repetition. Physical law. Here is
Speaker 1: what the living majority chooses, and memory keeps supple. He
Speaker 1: folded his hands. The clocks I think are less for
Speaker 1: counting minutes than for claiming presents. Each says I was here,
Speaker 1: and in my time the day was shaped well. The
Speaker 1: square listens and answers, May yours ring true too? I
Speaker 1: took this away, the sum of my days now humming
Speaker 1: with the deep resonance of paradox quietly mastered. On my
Speaker 1: way back through the square, I passed a group of teenagers,
Speaker 1: phones in hand. I watched as upon entering the terrace,
Speaker 1: they glanced up, grinned, and synchronized their devices to their
Speaker 1: families preferred clock before settling in at the cafe. When
Speaker 1: their friends arrived, there were no complaints about lateness, just
Speaker 1: a hand shake, a glance at the nearest dial, and
Speaker 1: easy laughter. It was not that the world outside had
Speaker 1: no power. Here city time served surely for trains, for
Speaker 1: appointments in distant neighborhoods. But within the terrace, every one
Speaker 1: stepped into an older chamber, a local field, in which
Speaker 1: time was not a tyrant but a set of communal harmonies.
Speaker 1: The young accepted the difference with easy mockery, the old
Speaker 1: with ritual, the shopkeepers with pride. Those who could not
Speaker 1: drifted elsewhere. I found myself, after all this work, after
Speaker 1: all these contradictions, relaxed, almost content. The urge to see
Speaker 1: chaos where there was none fell away, replaced by a
Speaker 1: keen respect for the subtlety of the arrangement. This place
Speaker 1: had chosen, unconsciously, but unbreakably, to keep simultaneity in layered
Speaker 1: parallel sheets, the past and present, in many streams, but
Speaker 1: never at odds. Her Ibla found me beneath a linden,
Speaker 1: the petals turning up in his palm as the sun
Speaker 1: spilled fractured light over the stones. Well, he asked, I nodded,
Speaker 1: weighing the truth now resting settled within me. It's not
Speaker 1: that the clocks are wrong. They are right, each in
Speaker 1: their place, because every one here lives as if they are.
Speaker 1: It's the act of keeping that makes the time he smiled,
Speaker 1: offering me half a biscuit from mme e Volkov's morning tray.
Speaker 1: Not a bad thing, is it? Once you're used to it.
Speaker 1: The world allows it. Just here, just so. I chewed
Speaker 1: the biscuit, its edges crisp with carraway, and thought, for
Speaker 1: a long moment my old loyalty to structure, to single
Speaker 1: lines no longer carried its edge. I felt gratitude for
Speaker 1: having been shown that other solutions exist, ones that value
Speaker 1: flexibility over compliance, memory over uniformity, and perhaps above all,
Speaker 1: the humility of accepting that truth may be plural and
Speaker 1: still sufficient. I stayed longer on the terrace in the
Speaker 1: days that followed, sometimes armed only with my body's clock,
Speaker 1: other times content to consult the nearest face I found.
Speaker 1: The more I joined in that the anxiety of counting
Speaker 1: minutes faded, conversations wandered, meetings stretched or shrank as the
Speaker 1: clocks dictated. I left my watch at home, took my
Speaker 1: slowest route to the square, and let myself arrive by
Speaker 1: the baker's hour or the booksellers, whichever rhythm the day invited.
Speaker 1: No one ever marked me early or late. All that
Speaker 1: mattered was that I was here. Now in company in
Speaker 1: this town. They kept schedule, not for efficiency, but for belonging.
Speaker 1: On the last evening before the rains returned, I sat
Speaker 1: alone beneath the linden My note book closed the page
Speaker 1: nearly full. Twelve clocks flanked the terrace one by one
Speaker 1: as the light failed, Each chimed its peculiar hour. Their
Speaker 1: songs overlapped, a stall, a surge, a delicious confusion in
Speaker 1: the air, like a melody just skipping over its refrain.
Speaker 1: The people smiled, dinners lengthened or ended, children darted home
Speaker 1: by one reckoning or another. Every hour was claimed and kept,
Speaker 1: and none left wanting. Listening to that chorus, the clocks
Speaker 1: overlapping peals shimmering just out of unison, I wondered not
Speaker 1: only about time, but about all the other things in
Speaker 1: the world we strained to make uniform, fearing muddle, when
Speaker 1: perhaps all that's needed is a kind of practiced expectant patience,
Speaker 1: and so many things might be harmoniously let differ, all
Speaker 1: of us still arriving in time together, and that is
Speaker 1: the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
Speaker 1: you in the next one.