Jim Carruth, Glasgow’s official poet, thinks of the youthful James Watt, the great inventor, in one of his poems prompted by the extraordinary range of exhibits in Glasgow University’s Hunterian Museum. Hamish Whyte’s contribution below is self-explanatory.

SPENDING TIME WITH MODEL

NEWCOMEN STEAM ENGINE

The young instrument maker is left alone

with the task of repairing this small model.

Full scale it pumps water out of coal mines

allowing the men to dig deeper underground.

He is well aware how steam from a small boiler

should escape to fill the cylinder above it,

where a piston shifts the linked arch head

of the pivoting beam and lowers the pump rod.

From there cold water injected into the cylinder

will condense the steam creating a partial vacuum.

The greater pressure outside the cylinder

pushes the piston down, lifting the pump rod up.

He revels in the intricate detail of the process

but as a witness to its inefficient beauty

he questions the inevitable loss, the cooling.

This model after all is about the learning.

REMAINS

We love clues

to the invisible.

From a workman’s hands

imprinted in concrete

on the Dundas Street

pavement

to this broken

terracotta tile

found near the Antonine

Wall bearing

the unmistakable mark

of a dog’s paw.