GAWPING AT GEW-GAWS


Redder than Blackpool-rock, on the outside,
Broad as an armspan,
Long as his leg,
Thicker than a match-box length,
It made him mist-up Mottram's store-glass,
To admire its marbled-blue insides,
To drool on a score of the weirdest words,
To see and say their cyphers with the semantics
of the tongue-tied:
Cupric oxide - Potash Alum - Cobalt Chloride - Nitre -
Verdigris, Litmus, Sodium Sulphite (metabisulphite),
Charcoal, Chalk.
Little bits of cork called 'Logwood Chippings',
Gypsum crystals (pink as a blush),
Manganese Sulphate (pink but paler),
Copper Sulphate's sapphire-stuff,
All of 'em packed in little glass fingers,
Test-tubes, the shopkeeper called 'em.
One of 'em white, and one of 'em red,
Two of 'em empty - two with stoppers - with a
natty little bottle-brush left in the fifth,,
Up one corner they'd stuck a tiny funnel,
Like a dinky little trumpet made of glass.
Bits of glass-tube gleamed like chopsticks
next to the red rubber ooJit.
-And that iron-pipe-effort with the sliding doo-dad -
-How come they'd threaded it like a nut
If he stuck it on the bolt-bit of that unscrewed
yo-yo - what'd that wha'sname do ?
And wha's them round bits of paper for?
Wha's that pot like a fairy's po'?
Wha's they keep in them red and blue boxes?
Why put fuse-wire in a chemistry-set..? ...



-Sterl