Posted on 9 -3-2004
Sam Sampson
Contraptions
'Contraptions' (Auden's word) …
– Allen Curnow, 30/6/99
i
A mercurial gauge
he forced the wing nut
counter-clockwise, stripped
out luck's predestination;
factored-in, a secular flight
the torqued fish bowl
blurb: 'my life is a series
of revolutions'.
O (pinion):
a wrought thread? a waxed
mechanical cadence? Perpetual
motion: a fish-bellied segued contraption.
ii
Let the contraption effectually consume itself. The contraption
must be
capable of drawing, day by day, on a level plane, a train of
images; including
tender and cogito. The contraption must have two safety valves;
one
completely out of reach, and neither fastened. The contraption
must be
spring-loaded. The contraption (with complement of blood and
bone) must
not expect omniscience, and the contraption of lesser properties
will be
preferred. The contraption may be put to the test of a pressure,
not exceeding
150 pounds per square inch (the contraption not being answerable
to any
damage that may occur as a consequence). The contraption must
have a
mercurial gauge, with index rod, showing pressure above 46 pounds
per
square inch; constructed to blow out a pressure of 60 pounds
per square inch,
for an unspecified time.
*
25 cognition tubes. 3-inches diameter.
Lobe-jacketed chatterbox. Fitted regulator.
2 blast pipes. 1.5-inch orifices. 150-pound soundbox.
*
Every contraption combined to combust. Friction reduced such
that a silk
thread could interconnect: hydrogen, steam – columns of
water and columns
of mercury – a hundred atmospheres, and a perfect vacuum;
contraptions
working within a circle; sound generated at one end of the process
and giving
it to the other – contraptions within contraptions –
multiplying contraptions,
without diminishing contraptions; balancing countervailing forces,
to the
ne plus ultra of perpetual motion.
____________________________________________________________
Copyright (photograph, text and sound files) © Sam Sampson,
2002-2003.
Download
a sound file of the author reading the above poem: MP3 format
or Real Audio.
Each file is over 3 Mb in size and has a playing time of about
3 minutes. The MP3 file will be streamed and played back by
QuickTime in an Apple Mac environment; the Real Audio file will
work on any platform but can only be heard after the entire
file has been downloaded – this may take some time over
a dial-up (modem) connection.
_____________________________________________________________
Author's Note:
In Contraptions, the epigraph is taken from my correspondence
with the New Zealand poet, the late Allen Curnow. In section
two, I have borrowed and, in most cases, extensively reworked
details from L.T.C.Rolt's book, George and Robert Stephenson:
The Railway Revolution.
(Contraptions first appeared in the spring 2002 edition (no.
204) of the New Zealand periodical, Landfall, and was dedicated
to Allen Curnow: 17 June 1911 - 23 September 2001.)
Sam Sampson grew up in West Auckland, New Zealand, attending
Auckland University where he majored in Philosophy and taught
Ethnomusicology. Recent poems have appeared in Ariel, Slope,
Stand, NZ Listener, Poetry Review, Jacket and Salt V17.1.
|