REGISTERED from some abandoned clock comes the extra ticks I hear they fell about the world after no one was left to listen and at night when it is coldest fall again from the beams in my attic or yours or in the attic of a house that those who lived there were forced to leave some other thing that no one could hear falls between the ticks with a regularity man's instruments of measure instrumments made of metal of sparks of wheels of levers of chains of porcelain also record and it is registered in me this thing made of nothing as if my listening were one of the instruments others bend close to read my listening for the pauses between words of my conversation with the not-yet-born