They're looking at a house, arguing whether
it's Victorian or Edwardian - one points out the
former's yellow stocks, slate roof, cannon head
chimneys, the other, the latter's multi-paned sashes,
veranda, fish scale hanging tiles
as if there is a moment when a house must change
from one style to another, that the foreman, learning
of a Queen's death, would carry on helping a mason
lift a gargoyle, tell labourers to continue mixing
cement or shout for them to cease
a carpenter to lay down his saw, bricklayers their
trowels, carry them home, bossing mallets, hammers,
ask them to wait till a decision be made, perhaps
to start again, the blueprints, young architect,
cravatted, elegant, foreman calling at cottages
rounding up his men
They walk on, laughing at their pedantry,
leaving a charge hand long gone,
a house in confusion.