Harmony

The autumn tourists let themselves be driven
into the town’s museum for to dry
their clammy coats and cast disdainful eyes

at yet another group of objects linked
in nothing but in place and quite devoid
of system: there’s the noose that once was used

in witches’ trials on the local height
that somehow found its way into a chest
in the St Mary’s - quite an old bequest -

an awkward drawing of a sleeping child
done by a master of the grammar school
and listed rules of same; a detailed map

of the old place, some years before the fire
that laid its centre waste; a heather broom
that must have seen at least one moor ablaze

judged by the soot - and then you stop and fail
to hear your partner’s question: right before
your staring eyes there is a copy of

a simple toy train in a case that holds
some bigwig’s things. Just such a train would fill
your drizzly spare time afternoons - you’d go

and travel through an ordered world you lost
when that same train was handed on and soon
forgotten – then the only order came

from classifying things: attaching names,
important grown-up games – but never more
the natural way it used to come before.