In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
To fairly allocate irrigation resources, the Persians measured time with water,
sinking a bowl in a larger vessel and tallying the count with pebbles.
And what is time but counting, determining the number of units within a set?
The sum of beats between silences and their diminishing echoes?
Its symbol in the West grew from fig and ivy leaves, while early medical
illustrations depicted pine cone-shaped organs.
In most reptilians, the aorta receives only oxygenated blood.
Qanats pump by gravity. The hagfish’s second resides in its tail.
Recognize the empty as full. Squeezed shut, we open.
Contraction and flow, ejection, inflow, relaxation.
Emotion as electrical impulse. Murmuring valves. The color red.
The fifth chamber remains silent and undetected.
The primitive fish’s chambers are arranged sequentially, but in an S-shape.
Ancients believed arteries transported air through the body.
The Buddhist figure, too, originated in leaves, symbolizing not love
but enlightenment. The ache of failure confounds us.
“In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End” was first posted here in May 2016.
O at the Edges 
“In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End”… sounds like one of Vincent Price’s lines from “The Masque of the Red Death”. You should get a Pulitzer Prize for your titles alone!
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Ah, Vincent Price! I can imagine him reciting the poem. Titles can play a large role in a poem, but they’re often overlooked or under-appreciated.
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A great title is an aesthetic aperitif, a stimulant to thought. It seems everyone wants to mix up some “hip” new aperitif with vermouth and pears and so on, but to me a simple sherry is so perfect, why mess with what works? A tiny glass of Bodegas Yuste Aurora Amontillado before you eat something nice? Perfect. “In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End”? Perfect.
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Yes, an aperitif! A title can set the tone, get the cogs turning even before the opening line has been read.
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When I tried the finest Peking duck ever made, at the most famous duck restaurant in Bejing (Peking) it was as if Reality “bent” a little thus was the extreme deliciousness of the dish. I have read more than a few of your titles and opening lines and experienced the same effect. Having studied both East and SouthEast Asia culture for a few decades, the line “I am Brahma, the straight line…” absolutely stunned me with its implications and aesthetic impact. “A little” can set a LOT of tone in your particular work.
Consider your “aperitifs” 9 course meals fit to be set out at Ikuta Jinja for Amaterasu herself!
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Can we share this poem on our Science poetry site, Collecting Reality?
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Yes, of course. I would be honored.
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Thanks! It will go up this coming Sunday.
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Wonderful!
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I had to reread this a few times. The final statement, “The ache of failure confounds us.”, is an interesting ponder…I haven’t fully sorted it out yet.
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I’ll leave you to it. 🙂
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🙂 🙂
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