SESTINA ON A MODEL RAILWAY EXHIBITION.(Poem)

 
   First, there is the tiny flashing of pistons 
   between the English meadows, timber-frame Tudor houses 
   or dry Australian paddocks with wheat. Smoke 
   from tiny funnels, flashing lights at crossings, 
   and the somewhat satisfied look of the engineers 
   as they contemplate their handiwork and the crowd. 
 
   Then what I notice is the size of the crowd 
   gathered at every layout to watch the pistons, 
   and exchange learned observations with the engineers, 
   pointing at details of the tiny houses: 
   bathers at mirror-ponds, elvish bicycles propped at crossings, 
   hearth-fire through window, torch-bulb in cotton-wool smoke. 
 
   Or dry wheatlands, with back-drop of gum-trees and smoke, 
   tiny crow on gum-tree, thread snake at burrow still as the crowd 
   moves on. Children wonder at the crossings 
   as the light-blinking boom-gates close for the pistons. 
   And not children only. They are all here where the houses 
   are hand-sized, where the one-seventy-second-scale engineers 
 
   run bridges and tunnels. These engineers 
   retain some sort of mystery, a thing ...