Courtiers of Time

You courtiers of time pay it homage
So slavishly, like fawning sycophants
Competing for a powerful Lord's favor.
Your eyes lock on the movement of its hands
Like a dog's when its master holds a bone
Aloft to tease it. Pitiless as age,
Cloaked in the lean and hungry numerals
Of Rome, the voice of time, stern as old Cato
Demanding the destruction of Carthage,
Issues its decrees from our cottage walls.

Securely enthroned, it mandates we march
Like soldiers to its strict martial cadence.
My mind plots coup d'etats to overthrow
The tyrannical regime of the clock.
Yet daily I pay it assidious court
And lock my movements to its gravity
As though it's my sun and I a planet
Tied to it in a never-changing orbit.
When the chimes toll, I go where they bid me,
For I too, am a courtier of time.