Tony Harrison's Selected Poems first appeared in Penguin in 1984 and has been in print ever since. Highly respected and widely honoured, Harrison nevertheless stands outside the establishment as someone who has done important work for television and theatre, and whose poems have frequently had a sharp political edge. Under the Clock presents a brand new body of work by Harrison, reflecting the poet's ongoing personal and political concerns.

Under Dyson's clock in Lower Briggate was where my courting parents used to meet. It had a Father Time and Tempus Fugit sticking out sideways into the street above barred windows full of wedding bands, 'eternities' to be inscribed with names, like that I felt on dad's when we held hands, or on mam's crumbling finger in cremation's flames.

Today back on Briggate I stopped and saw the red hands on the Roman XII and V those lovers won't meet under any more, glad stooping Father Time and I survive. I see the scythe, the hourglass, the wings, the Latin you'd proudly ask me to construe and think of the padded boxes with your rings, under the clock to keep our rendezvous.

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