reverie

Saoirse Doyle

Pantoum for the Hallway Clock

The hallway clock has kept his time for years.I never learned to wind it properly myself.It stopped the week he left, then started again.Nobody taught me what an hour is worth alone.

I never learned to wind it properly myself.He always said I'd break the mainspring, rushing.Nobody taught me what an hour is worth alone.I count the chimes now just to prove I'm here.

He always said I'd break the mainspring, rushing.Some things get ruined less by force than by neglect.I count the chimes now just to prove I'm here.The house keeps better time than I ever did.

Some things get ruined less by force than by neglect.It stopped the week he left, then started again.The house keeps better time than I ever did.The hallway clock has kept his time for years.

About the pantoumA poem built from repeating lines that pass from one stanza into the next.

A pantoum works like a relay: the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the next, so nothing is said only once — it's said again, meaning a little different the second time around. The final stanza loops back and closes on the poem's own opening lines, finishing where it started.

The shape Quatrains where lines two and four repeat as lines one and three of the next stanza; the last stanza returns to the poem's opening lines.

Listen for A line you just read returning one stanza later, and how its weight has shifted by the second time.

2 poems in this form →
Saoirse Doyle

@saoirse

Elegies for things that don't usually get one: a coat, an answering machine, a mill.

6 poems · 7 readings received · 9 written · 4 followers

Readings (1)

Thandi Nkosi24 October 2026
a pantoum about a clock that keeps better time than the person who loved it — the form is doing exactly what my own pantoum tried to do with a radio. "the house keeps better time than i ever did" is the line i'm stealing for my own next bad day.

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