How does Clarke bring out the theme of teaching in the poem "Clocks"? Support your answer with the help of poetic devices.

In this
poem, the narrator is teaching a young boy while taking a walk with him. She picks a dandelion
and uses it to begin teaching him to tell time:

I teach
him to tell the time
by dandelion. "One o'clock. Two."

In treating the dandelion as if it is a clock, she is using
, which is likening one thing to another without using the words
"like" or "as." She sees that the dandelion is round like the face of the
clock, so she can use it to start showing him the location of the numbers on a clock.

He doesn't show much interest in learning to tell time, for he blows "a field of
gold from the palm of his hand," presumably the petals she has plucked from the dandelion
and placed in his palm as she is teaching him about time. Here, the narrator uses the literary
device of to show how the child blows away (blows off) her
interest in teaching him what she wants him to know. What he learns, she says, is the
"power of naming."

In the next stanza, the narrator and the child
are walking along the beach at sunset. Clarke uses the literary device of
to emphasize the child's nervousness at being by the sea.
Alliteration is when words placed close together begin with the same letter. Here we learn he is
"wary of waves and sand's soft treachery." The repeated "w" and
"s" sounds draw attention to words that connote his sense of his worry in this new
place.

The narrator continues to try to teach him, this time by asking a
question that perhaps is meant to make him feel more comfortable about the crashing of the
waves:

What does the sea say?

This is a fanciful inquiry that uses the literary device of
to teach. Personification is treating an animal or object that is
not human as if it is a human by giving it human characteristics. Here, the narrator is acting
as if they sea can talk to us as if it is a person. The boy responds as follows:

"Ffwff! Ffwff!" he answers, then turns
his face
to the sky and points
to the full-blown moon.

"Ffwff" is his word for flower. He says the waves are naming the moon a
flower. He demonstrates he has learned the "power of naming." He has also, although
without realizing it, learned to use metaphor; after all, the moon is not a flower, but it is
round, beautiful, and blooming like a flower.

The poem
also uses the literary device of enjambment to emphasize the theme
of teaching. Enjambment is when a line a poetry doesn't end at the end of a line but flows into
the next line, such as in

I teach him to tell the
time
by dandelion

There's a pause and sense of
surprise in breaking the line at the word "time" and finishing it with the idea of
"by dandelion," which mirrors some of the surprise that comes with teaching and
learning.

Clarke thus uses the literary devices of metaphor, imagery,
alliteration, personification, and enjambment to highlight the theme of teaching. The poem shows
the child learning what he wants to learn and learning through making connections between one
thing and another, such as a dandelion and the moon.