The Steampunk of Ballykillduff

In Ballykillduff, where the bog-cottons grow,
And tractors move slower than clouds ever go,
There rumbles a marvel of brasswork and puff:
The whistling contraption of Ballykillduff.

Its chimney-stack belches a lavender steam,
Its pistons clank onwards like parts of a dream,
The gears all turn sideways, the wheels spin askew,
And no one can say what it’s meant to do.

The smith in his apron declares with a cough,
“It brews tea at dawn, and it scares crows right off!
It mends broken fences, it churns up the peat,
And plays merry jigs with mechanical feet!”

The priest shook his head and the postman grew pale,
The barber got tangled in coppery rail,
The schoolchildren cheered as it huffed down the lane,
Whistling out sermons in high-tin refrain.

At night by the pub, when the fiddles strike up,
It gulps down the porter from pint glass or cup,
Then sings out in whistles, all clattering gruff—
The wild steampunk wonder of Ballykillduff!

And though it may rattle, and though it may groan,
And sometimes forgets the way home of its own,
The villagers say, with a fond sort of pride:
“It’s daft as a donkey—but ours to ride!”