A Distraction

Poem 2: "A Clock stopped--" (Johnson 287)

A Clock stopped —
Not the Mantel's —
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing —
That just now dangled still —

An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain —
Then quivered out of Decimals —
Into Degreeless Noon —

It will not stir for Doctors —
This Pendulum of snow —
The Shopman importunes it —
While cool — concernless No —

Nods from the Gilded pointers —
Nods from the Seconds slim —
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life —
And Him —

*

Poem number 2 in our study of interruption! This is one of my favorite Dickinson poems. Here she describes the "clock stopped" isn't "the mantel's"--a more modest clock you could put on the mantel above a hearth--but a grandfather clock, one of the really whimsical ones which marks the hour by some extravagant display. The one she's imagining (or describing) appears to send "puppets bowing" when it strikes the hour. (I'm picturing the clock in the TV show The Munsters, which is before most of your times; or the friendly clock in Captain Kangaroo, also before most of your times!)

Geneva--the city associated with clock-making, watch-making, and therefore "precision" and skill--wouldn't be able to fix this clock. It reminds us of the lines in poem 443: "And yet--Existence--some way back--/Stopped--struck--my ticking--through": once the time stops ticking in conventional ways, the clock measures eternity. The "trinket" fills with "awe"; the puppets are frozen in excruciating postures, "hunched, with pain"; what it communicates is "cool--concernless No"--nonexistence, death. As humans we get "decades of arrogance" when we measure time according to our own lifespans, but nonexistence brackets our life (or so Dickinson believes).

I invite your comments and questions on the poem, as ever!