Bathyal

From the Greek bathys — deep. The ocean’s deep middle reach, below the last of the sunlight. Down here there is no day and no night: no sunrise, no shadow, nothing to set a clock by. The only light is made by living things.

Clepsydra

From kleptein and hydōr — water thief. The ancient water clock: time stolen drop by drop through a small opening. Greek courts timed speeches by them; when the water ran out, you stopped talking.

Together

A water thief at work in the one place the sun cannot contradict it. Each drop is a second; sixty are distilled into a minute, minutes into hours, hours into the day’s two halves, days into months — and once a year, at midnight, the last drop of all sinks past the digits into the abyss, unmeasured.

clepsydra · drops become months