The toll sounded twelve
(it had kept up with time ever since I was young)
when the clock tower fell.
(all the tourists were screaming and holding their mouths)

The staircase held
while the groundwater swelled
with mortar and sand
and the ring of the clock tower bell.

It was happening so fast
That we didn't feel time pass.

The movement of alarms,
and the passage of the ships into the atoll.
The locks were filling up with water,
and the silt had settled on the grass.