My Silver Watch was Five Metres Tall

And had been a good friend of mine for many years

We travelled together by train throughout Europe and the Middle East

When the war came along we fled to the United States

And purchased a Hacienda Style house in Los Angeles

In 1944 my silver watch was called up for military service

Which upset me a great deal as I was rejected because of my weak lungs

In the July of that year I received a telegram to say that my watch had been killed in France

My grief was intense and for six months I locked myself away in a watch factory

But I did not find companionship and slowly I became something of a recluse

I visit my watch’s grave in a military cemetery near Caen once a year

It is a peaceful place where the smothered silence is only broken

By the fading ticking of the silver watches who died before their time