“There was the (alleged) time he asked engineers on the original iPod team to stay up all night fiddling with the headphone jack so that it made a more satisfying clicking sound.”—Farhad Manjoo, on Steve Jobs.
This poem, says what’s
his Yeats, better
close with the click
of a well-made box—but
he’s vague on the specific make
of click. Is it one chirp
of a cricket, sifted
from its field
of creaks and isolated
on its own track?
A swan’s neck high-
heeled until it goes crack?
Or is it richer sound—
a couple of castanets
cut from the bones of a pair
of Marie Antoinettes
and clacked the once
and disposed of?
Whatever, it better
resound. We trust
a diary will keep its word
under lock and key or stay
mum on the names
of persons we wish
to sleep with—but the clasp
when we close it
better cluck its tongue
cleanly. What’s grating
is the indefiniteness
of the death rattle-
ragged, the way
we have to guess
which one’s the last
gasp by waiting
out the sequence.