Plague Songs - The clocks go back / by Rich Hobbs

The most magical season of the year

When Time itself rewinds,

All wrongs are wrangled and all regrets rowed back.

Except, of course,

The systems still in place

Will always let us down

So that, in practice,

In that special hour,

There can be no provision for the use of mobile phones

Or even email to inform

The denizens of all the threads and webs of twanged remorse

That processes are now in train to make things right once more.

And even if the landlines worked 

It’s 1am on Sunday morning, and everybody that you’ve hurt

Is either drunk or fast asleep.

And all preplanning, instrumental to

Turning Back The Clocks is, Chronologists insist, both

Unethical and way beyond the realms of Physics, as it’s understood.

And as you’ve only got an hour which then, turned back, devours itself, 

All constructs complex enough to make an ounce of difference to anything

Will always miss one last essential cog or wish and break as Time, quite literally, runs out.

So you’ll just have to wait again

Until the clocks go forward, and then try gathering into yet another hour

The boxes full of things you’d like to be deleted.