The Cult of Clocks

by Simon Whitechapel

Within the skull, within the brain,
Set steady hand to certain rein,
And know the that, and know the this,
Of stone-sure calm and sky-wide bliss.

Each bathed and whole-shaven neophyte was handed, on entry into the cult, a dodecahedral clock, fist-sized, whereof each face bore an hour-thorn behind a crystal shutter, asynchronous with its eleven fellow-thorns, that the hour was chimed twelve times, not once, as arpeggio, not chord. And ’twas his task, in the duodecennium that succeeded, to learn the delicate mechanism of the clock and the usage of tools by which it was adjusted: rods, picks, tweezers; till at last, having mastered breath-suspension and calm amid the purposive cacophony of drum, horn, and cockcrow, he had brought all faces, all thorns, into synchrony. Hereat, he could seek permission of the hierarch to set the dodecahedron before the gate of the adytal gardens, robur et æs triplex, that, chiming medianocturnally all simultaneous notes of the cult’s dodecatonic scale, it might release the sonic lock thereof and allow him to pass therethrough, neophyte no more, to the mysteries and marvels therebeyond.

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