Marius Kociejowski's The Water Clock has long been a touchstone of mine, if you will permit that feel-good word in this discussion; just that I have not always followed its quiet injunction to only pursue 'what truly matters', far from it. Yes, forget the mild depiction of the poem as a 'touchstone' and substitute 'wagging finger', and we get closer to how the poem affects me now and then; and how, sometimes, I would not mind seeing the poet left to the tender mercies of a dark alley. In any case, I expect, in coming days, to expand this page and include other poems by other poets, even if Kociejowski should object.

James Sutherland-Smith

Charlotte Melançon