Steel giraffes

I took these photographs at the Waterfront a few days ago. I have a weird affinity for industrial machines, cranes, bulldozers, graders, etc., and feel compelled to take photographs whenever I see one. (I have not yet discovered the psychological source of this obsession, so any suggestions will be helpful ....)

But it made me think of this poem by my favourite South African poet, Douglas Livingstone:

Steel Giraffes

There are, probably, somewhere

arms as petal-slight as hers;

there are probably somewhere

wrists as slim;

quite probably, someone has

hands as slender-leafed as hers;

the fingers, probably

bare of rings, as thin.

Certainly, there is nowhere

such a dolour

of funnels, mastings, yards,

filaments of dusk-ringing shrouds

woven through the word goodbye,

riveted steel giraffes

tactfully looking elsewhere

necks very still to the sky.