When, having places my piece
where it can do least harm
to my campaign or yours,
I stop my clock
as you proceed to meditate
your answering move,
and if - though neither of us talks
of prior moves and earlier gambits,
wary of the specular tricks
memory plays in a losing cause -
the clock tock-ticked back,
slipping the pawl
of gesture and commitment
that locked us into this intricate position
in which we cannot recognize
our least desire or ambition,
then chess, the game that plays us
like the most remorseless master,
would banish the tic of recollection
or adjust our lives to match it,
towering, valorous, cardinal, majestic,
no longer intimating
merely stalemate or defeat
or appalling commonplace decline,
moving us back
to the sun-numbed terrace
and the gleaming board,
the white porcelain cups
on the marble-topped table,
and here beside us as we turn to look
the coral mirror of the sea
nicked by only the tiniest of flaws -
then chess would be the game of kings indeed
and time an imperial dream,
its unchecked cogs and ratchets
letting us play
the game we never knew we lived.

Penned by my hand on the 18th of Sarapin, in the year 276 AF.