time for justice

The clock on the wall over the doorway to the courtroom read "5:01.33." I lie. It was not a digital timepiece, so it was impossible to record accurately its divination of time. (Does a clock read? How about announce, say, state, declare, report?) A design straight out of the Seventies. Metal or faux metal hour and minute hands. For the hours, solid silverish bars: for the numeral 12 placeholder, a thicker and darker unenumerated bar. The hour hand on where the 5 would be. In that minimalist era, designers assumed we could figure out where and what the hours were. And they were right. The minute hand roughly halfway between the 12 position and the first minute afterward. During my first visit to the courtroom, it was easy to discern and conclude that the clock was moribund. It wasn't ticking. Nor tocking. Dead battery or electrical disconnect, who could say. Time stood still. A week later, the clock made the same stoic statement. Time still stood still. Time froze as justice prevailed. Or as justice's facade winked, even as the hour and minute were suspended in time (actually, out of time). Was it time for justice. Or had the time for justice or its synonyms passed long before any defendant entered the courtroom. Rest assured, nearly all the defendants did not pass under the faceless clock as described. That portal was reserved for the public: lawyers, friends, relatives, advocates, intimates, enablers, defendants alike. Most, though not all, defendants entered through a doorway in back of the bench, to the bench's right. They were shackled, cuffed, chained, guarded by uniforms with guns. Typically guarded in their statements though sometimes unguarded and unvarnished, to their detriment. A minority of defendants came through the public's clocked-unclocked-stillborn entrance, to sit in the secular pews. When called to the bench, they spoke or kept clocklike silence and let counsel confer with the judge. But was the clock halted in its tracks at 5 (add a half minute or so) ante meridiem or post meridiem. Was time merely shutting its eyes to these matters, these sunrise or sunset deliberations. Was time as blind as justice, as the trope has it. Time was recusing itself from blame or guilt, from accusation or defense, from guilt or innocence. The sun doth shine on the just and the unjust. The same goes for time. Can we speculate on why no one has repaired this clock. Does anyone know or care. What difference would it make. One can argue, your honor, that the defendants, and all the other members of the cast (defense and prosecuting attorneys, judge, armed guards, stenographer, audience) would prefer to not hear the infinitesimal click of time, the merciless hourglass sands trickling in accord with the laws of gravity and physics. Who needs such added pressure. Better for the clock on the wood-paneled wall to pause Sphinxlike; an oracular nolo contendere. May time be called as a witness, your honor. Would that time healed all wounds, and crimes. Does anybody really know what time it is, or was, or should be. Does anybody really care. Is it time for justice or for mercy or both or neither. No clock, ticking or timeless, can say, state, declare, or report the verdict. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. Justice is served on a platter of petals and tears.