|
THE
HOBBYISTS
Kids
no more, though captains of chugging toys
that
sweep across the Sunday morning pond,
they
grow the way they wish to, with the boys.
Two-foot
destroyer and three-foot launch respond
to
radio devices. An aerial
wand
waves
over each controller’s head. The
scene
is
masculine: sweat, docks and gasoline.
They
are as crafty in their fantasy
as
grand world-masters of event or thought.
Too
au fait with design they may not be—
diodes
and torque—but brains are to be bought.
They’d
be inscribed with astro- and argonaut,
the
skilful doers. A twisting
lever plucks
a
five-star liner from the reeds and ducks.
The
March light is a lattice of molten stone:
sky
soldered into water as if sky
must
be laid ruin, its ribbing bedded, prone
in
a green park where everyone walks by—
couples,
kids, dogs—where arrows signify
the
way to go see what the Romans made
or
where St Alban set up God’s stockade.
Cathedral
and museum have reinforced
the
shapes men have to fit. The
experts name
a
way that diode, ogive, hypocaust,
lex,
missal, medicine, may form a game
where
men have parts. As such
this sport is tame,
making
toy boats run random in a pool.
Hobbyists
do not care, though, as a rule.
The
experts make the game, ignoring which
the
aerial boys then better the idea
by
instinct. Rule within rule.
They make a niche,
a
circle in which each man knows his tier.
The
one with boils ranks high, with all that gear;
pram-trolley,
oil-rag, part of the mystique:
his
copper hull has never sprung a leak.
Alan
Marshfield
top
of page
note |
