Among his gears and springs precisely wound,
The watchmaker heard time’s relentless sound.
Each tick, each tock, each chime a mournful sign,
Resounding through the workshop of his own design.

He’d crafted clocks for fifty years or more,
But lately heard their tickings all conspire—
The pendulums like scythes across his floor,
Each hour that drew him nearer to death’s pyre.

He prayed to halt the pendulums’ ghostly dance,
To still their swing, defy cold circumstance;
But time, amused, unmasked its ageless grin,
And sent him endless work he’d ne’er begin.

He smashed the first at quarter after three,
Its face reminded him of wasted years.
He crushed the next at half-past, lost in lunacy,
But found the silence bred more desperate fears.

For when the ticking stopped, he felt it still—
The phantom pulse beneath his trembling skin,
The seconds marching forward, cold and shrill,
The drumbeat of mortality within.

He wound the clocks, then set them all to chime,
Then stayed their hands and stopped them once again.
If he could just arrest the tide of time,
Perhaps he’d stay Death’s unforgiving chain.

But time cares not for mortal dread or wish—
It flows regardless, merciless and true.
His heart, a clock of meat and blood, grew skittish,
Its rhythm faltering to something dark and new.

He clutched his chest, tumbled through gears of grime,
His workshop silent save his labored breath.
A lifetime spent in measuring out time
Had brought him face to face with certain death.

They found him there at dawn, his eyes still wide,
Surrounded by the timepieces his hands arrayed—
Each clock had stopped the instant he had died,
As if time froze the moment his soul had paid.

His spirit turned within the gears he made,
Condemned to wind the ages without cease;
While time looked on, unmerciful, unswayed,
And mocked his toil with sardonic peace.