Last Days of the Musee Mechanique

We have often been dusty you and I
and further apart than we should have been
under the shadow of the camera obscura
some years we were apart and I could not see you at all
our sweet silent era

The sun passing through the window each day on your Golden Arm
There are faded scorecards in our past
While I pleased many, I fooled few
Unlike you who bested most through your mettle you

Do you remember the boy?
His small nervous sweaty hand.
I never moved him - he saw right through me.
But you quietly scared him by doing nothing
his life was then a lot of squinting and flinching in the pre-girl sun

The fires on the docks
fleeting weekend
the scuddled shore of ships
the scores of silent coolies

They all came
with rolled up sleeves
to put coins in us