we imagine that we gain a precious hour,
but, in fact,
our progress is arrested
and comes under attack.
When the clocks go back, when we reverse the dial
and wake up in the dark from fitful sleep,
the liberties we took for granted,
our hard-won liberations from the yoke of superstition,
and the tyranny of religion, suddenly,
lie scattered, like mere troubled dreams,
and we, now slaves to older times,
are no longer intact.
When the clocks go back, when we go anti-clockwise,
do we find ourselves surprised
that retrograde positions
become the new conditions?
Are we amazed that the Golden Age,
those ‘Good Old Days,’ when life was simpler
and we all knew our place,
turns out to have been Prisons?
Hungry, racist, cold
and ignorant, in fact,
when the clocks go back?
