Eclogue in Line to View The Clock by Christian Marclay

Brian Blanchfield

Okay, but now imagine someone,

one of fifty, say, in the queue, fiftieth first

and advancing little, somewhere within

the seventy-two-hour window of efficacy

for post-exposure prophylaxis, and, later,

in the screening room watching The Clock

with the few dozen others in rows behind and ahead

who had waited too. He knows he has to

but he hasn’t yet. We pick it up there.

It is two thousand eleven a few more days.

The movie tells what time it is.

In poetry too we all face forward.