THE REPAIR SHOP

All our locked-down days they strolled
up the familiar path, pilgrims cradling
broken offerings: harmonium, rocking horse,
steam engine, vase, laying them carefully
on the altar of the priests and priestesses
with the power to touch the chipped,
the stopped, the stained, the shattered
and return them to the untarnished
wholeness of the past – its scarlet and gold,
purple and greenwood, its smooth-wheeled
motion, music-box chimes and peals,
wafts of coal-tar soap, pipe tobacco,
lavender-scented aunts – winding back
the clockwork of the generations
with painstaking, nimble-fingered magic.
And we, the hungry-eyed, watch for a sign
that our splintered world could be restored 
by someone with the skill and patience,
the paint, glue, solder or stitch to repair time,
to return us to the days before the age of touch
slammed shut in our astonished faces.