It's about time, Colonel 7.62. It's all about time!
Who can forget your timeless revolutionary concept of People's Time(TM) and the People's Calendar(TM)?
All new arrivals - read it! Take your time! Please!
And I recall responding to this with my own poem from the old days, translated from the Mother Tongue. Paradoxically, it didn't age at all, but only became younger, acquiring more new meanings.
Time and I
By Oleg Atbashian
Clocks that twinkle, ring and tick —
they're ludicrous like galoshes, absurd like arithmetic —
to me, who irradiates time from under the fingernails.
Time's actually the continuation of my fingers.
It emanates out of my nerve-endings, and then —
it flies into corners, carried by drafts,
gets into clocks and animates the cuckoo.
And then clocks start ringing, buzzing and squeaking:
"Cuckoo-cuckoo, take an ax,
stop this madness, break off our hands,
split the dial, scatter our gears in the wind,
cut the bough you're perched on,
and cut the trunk too, cuckoo -
kill him, who dispenses time!"
That's why I have ten locks on each clock.
And outside my window - ten thousand cocks:
"What do we want? Time! When do we want it? NOW!
Broadcast the radio beeping at noon as soon as you can!"
I'll unlock the locks: Cuckoo, here ten thousand cocks.
They were asking for time. They wanted to smell it, to rub it,
to taste it on their tongues - and, maybe, to pinch a bit to hold it in remembrance.
Tell them the centrally planned Moscow time.
Our time we'll keep to ourselves.
Besides, I haven't got time to open my window every hour and shout "Coo-coo!"
Even without that, I'm already out of time. And time won't just stand there.
It'll stop coming to me, getting under my clothes and cooling my spine,
stirring my hair, streaming through fingers,
winding round the tip of my fountain-pen
and trickling down, clinging to paper, bundled in scrawls.
I'll simply remain numb-struck, like a clock with a lock.
[img]/images/various_uploads/Kremlin_Moscow_Time.jpg[/img]
Like that big-time clock on the Kremlin tower,
that sucks out time of our lives,
then gives us a little time
and keeps the rest for inside circulation
and for the all-important time management.
A clock that never blinks.
Nor rings, nor chirps, nor squeaks,
nor cries, nor grumbles, nor creaks…
Like that clock.
Like that clock with a shiny red star -
Just a clock...
A clock...
Clock...
Lock...
Ock...
Ck...
k..
...
..
.