There was Upon the Sill a Pencil Mark

There was upon the sill a pencil mark, / Vital with shadow when the sun stood still

At noon, but now, because the day was dark, / It was a pencil mark upon the sill.

And the mute clock, maintaining ever the same

Dead moment, blank and vacant of itself, / Was a pink shepherdess, a picture frame, / A shell marked Souvenir, there on the shelf.

Whence it occurred to her that he might be, / The mainspring being broken in his mind, / A clock himself, if one were so inclined, / That stood at twenty minutes after three-

The reason being for this, it might be said, / That things in death were neither clocks nor people, / but only dead.