• Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
    and some are treasured for their markings-

    they cause the eyes to melt
    or the body to shriek without pain.

    I have never seen one fly, but
    sometimes they perch on the hand.

    Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
    and rests its soft machine on ground:

    then the world is dim and bookish
    like engravings under tissue paper.

    Rain is when the earth is television.
    It has the property of making colours darker.

    Model T is a room with the lock inside-
    a key is turned to free the world

    for movement, so quick there is a film
    to watch for anything missed.

    But time is tied to the wrist
    or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

    In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
    that snores when you pick it up.

    I the ghost cries, they carry it
    to their lips and soothe it to sleep

    with sounds. And yet they wake it up
    deliberatly, by tickling with a finger.

    Only the young are allowed to suffer
    openly. Adults go to a punishment room

    with water but nothing to eat.
    They lock the door and suffer the noises

    alone. No one is exempt
    and everyone's pain has a different smell.

    At night when all the colours die,
    they hide in pairs

    and read about themselves-
    in colour, with their eyelids shut.