Mean Time Literary Elements

An unnamed and unidentified person suffering after the end of a relationship

Four quatrains of free verse

Light is used as a metaphor for happiness in the line "and stole light from my life." The resetting of clocks in fall is metaphorically described as sliding, with the phrase "slid back."

The phrase "light from my life" uses both alliterative L sounds and assonant I sounds. "Bleak streets" includes assonant E sounds, while "If the darkening sky could lift" includes assonant I sounds.

Though this poem describes two people who are separated, seemingly by a breakup or conflict, the speaker treats this separation as a shared burden—one that ironically unites the two involved people.

Lyric poem

The streets of an unidentified city on a winter night

Disheartened, depressed, fatalistic

Protagonist: the speaker. Antagonist: time.

The poem's conflict at first appears to be between the speaker and the addressee following a breakup or falling-out. However, on closer reading, the true conflict is between the speaker and time itself, since time has relegated her happiness to the past.

The poem's climax is the speaker declaring that both she and her addressee will inevitably die.

The announcement that the clocks "stole light" foreshadows the upcoming exploration of the links between loss and time.

The speaker's wish that the sky could give back "more than an hour" is an understatement, since, the work implies, she requires far more than an hour to mend her relationship and mental state.

The poem alludes to Greenwich Mean Time, the time as calculated at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, and used as a standard globally.

"Clocks" are used as a metonym for time generally

Time is personified through verbs like "stole," while the speakers heart is personified through the verb "gnaw."

The poem's descriptions of rain as "unmendable" and nights as "endless" are hyperbolic.

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