Lost to Perpetuannuality in Carcosa

(This is for Joe Pulver, not just because he thought up and edited A SEASON IN CARCOSA but because he's a trip—one you couldn't take for lucre.)

The vibrating cesium atom (Time) is an atom of regular habits.
To wild Carcosa it went to count: purported anxious rabbits.
Long history left the landscape something some would call a waste—
its rolling -scape as marked by pock as the moon's full-forward face.
The task slayed mere stupendous,
to dimensions quite horrendous
if 'purported' grew to more than a few real rabbits making x with haste.

How every hole could one atom count since each one needed watch?
Did the atom blanch or dither, stop, veer, turn back, fibrillate, agitate, vegetate, delegate; or even hmm one notch?
This vast Carcosan underground needs an army to survey,
but that will only happen on the day someone bags Someday.

The task was quite impossible. Yet the atom never wavered.
Down it went into the hole, atomlogically, nearest favoured.
and never left, was lost! Is lost
What cost! What cost!
But do I hear hooray!?

It's there now (the atom, vibrating)
snared in springs (they cannot-or-will-not help it) that it tickled to hilarity
in a hole alive with watches owned by rabbits of gregarity.

O! the pitfalls of regularity! If it didn't hiccup so metronomicarilly, it could loose and flee for Whence.
Or if only it could change its character. Say bumpkinise, stop to smell the rabbits, slow as talk over a country fence.

But though Carcosa's wild as a Carcosan equashion,
Time's movement of autocracy governs every nation,
the Gov rules, see. The clock itself. Its pocket holds the key,
or so it would if only it could
break into anarchy.

So now, rejoice
lift up your voice.
Thank Carcosa's ancient wars,
for the homes they made for residents who warranted the survey of them who long ago but who knows when-- hopped up from the shore.
(and hopefully, those springs are eternal, forever, or at least forevermore.)

&
When next you miss an important date
you know who to thank—an atom of regular habits, wild Carcosa, and anxious rabbits—
for giving us the Gift of Late.

That's those of us, that is—those in power, those few made for greatness.
We don't have watches. We have chronographs, timepieces, complications.
Thanks to cesium, we can always be counted on for our lateness.
In fact, you can weigh our greatness by how long we make others (not you, surely!) wait.