Clock

“Clock” uses human traits metaphorically to describe an object. It imagines the clock as the face of a miller. This metaphor stems from the fact that the hands of the clock turn around similarly to a mill. What is particularly curious is that the clock is compared to a miller and not to a mill, which would seem more logical.

When one looks inside, there is a “nest of worms”. This is a powerful image, as it conveys the ugliness of worms, the surprise and uncanniness of them being in a clock, and the complexity of a nest as a mechanism, a living entity, making the image of the nest of worms possible to read in a double way – the worms represent both the mechanism of the clock as well as entrails of a human being.

Compared with the difficulty of discovering the inner life of the wooden die, it is quite easy to open up a clock and see its entrails. “The wooden die” problematized the accessibility of the inwardness of the die as a result of its physical closeness, the impossibility of opening it and seeing what is inside. This impossibility arose from the die's physical structure, the fact that it phenomenologically seems to be a block of undifferentiated matter. Regardless of that, Harman's philosophy assumes that such a die is built up from smaller parts, even though it might phenomenologically not appear as such. In contrast, the clock appears as having distinct parts that we can easily perceive and describe. This phenomenological difference

results in Herbert's completely different approach to both objects. The die questions the difference between the inside and the outside and problematizes it. Thus, this difference does not serve any rhetorical purposes in the poem – it constitutes the central subject of the poem that the speaking voice reflects upon. “Clock” engages this difference for rhetorical purposes – it is used to oppose the external semblance of an ordered, mechanical movement and the internal chaos of biological decay represented by worms. The opposition of the inside and the outside is thus also a metaphor of the opposition between semblance and the true nature, between what is visible at first glance and what is hidden.

This different treatment does not suspend the ontological validity of the reflection in “The wooden die”, as both poems have different aims and reflect on different questions. It merely shows that the opposition of the inside and the outside is applied in various poems in different ways, as it serves different purposes. It is also worth noticing that the clock, in comparison to the wooden die or the pebble of the previously analyzed poems, is a thing constructed by humans for a particular purpose. It is not a random object that could be found out there in the universe, it belongs to the human world, it has a particular meaning, a

conventional place in everyday life and a particular mode of using. That is important if we take into account the distinction that Herbert seems to make between objects used by humans and objects that could be found outside of the human world.

The construction of the poem is clever, as it manages to describe an object by reference to human beings, and human beings by reference to an object. What seems

particularly interesting, is the fact that the poem in its construction gives almost no priority to humans. Apart from the last line, which is purely reflexive (“And that is what's supposed to usher us into eternity”), the text seems to be treating humans just like another object that one can compare to things in a poem to achieve a poetic effect.

The inwardness of the human is equally surprising for Herbert as the inwardness of the clock. He approaches the human as a biological entity, understanding its inside not as its mind, the world of its experience, but as a biological secret that the lyrical subject unwillingly uncovers to its own surprise. The poem is constructed upon the unexpected discovery of the biological nature. There is an ugliness to this perception of the human being as a biological unit subject to decay and death. And the metaphor continues – the clock and the human both point towards eternity as well as the failure to achieve it: both the clock with its imperfect mechanism, as well as the human body, the inner clock, which seems imperfect, too repelling

in its biology to serve as a vehicle that carries the human to eternity. The human body is simply not eternal and its decmposition (which the worms signify) indicates that no eternity is achievable due to the passage of time (the clock). However eternal the human mind might seem in its purity, the body is there always to disclose the dark secret of death and

decomposition.

Despite the almost equal treatment of both humans and clocks as objects, the poem clearly remains in the group of poems that do not deal with the objecthood of non-human entities, but rather show them in relation to human beings. This stands in contrast with “The wooden die” or “Pebble” which thematize objects as such, asking questions about their nature and the nature of objecthood.

From the point of view of Amerindian perspectivism that would transpose human culture onto other beings, the break in Herbert's treatment of objects becomes even more evident. In other words, Herbert's poems do not suggest the possibility to map human behavior into objects, or to read an object's inner world through analogy to humans, using human categories. The objects in such poems as “The wooden die” or “Pebble” are clearly constructed in opposition to humans. Especially “Pebble” articulates this opposition almost explicitly. The poem suggests that humans have their world, their own emotions, passions and incompleteness, whereas pebbles, complete creatures, with their perfect indifference towards any externality, are ontologically radically different. It would be therefore impossible to rewrite those poems' ontology through Amerindian perspectivism, or broadly speaking, through anthropomorphism.

Other poems, such as “Hen”, “Clock” or “Armchairs” ostensibly relate non-human beings to humans. Anthropomorphism serves here partially as a rhetorical tool to express the uncanniness of certain objects, to push the readers out of their usual perception of those objects; but anthropomorphism is in part also a way to metaphorically formulate a reflection on humans, and their limitations, their mortality, their strangeness. The reader can decide which reading s/he would choose or find more attractive.