'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 andtext) © Sam Sampson, 2002-2003.

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.