And like a scene in which the primitive

Enters the house and hardly comprehends

The way the masters live,

So do the first two days of ours unfold.

We look around wide-eyed,

Housesitting an apartment for some friends

In all its electronically applied

And hard-wired luxury, iPad-controlled.
A touch screen will indulge our every need,

Or idle wish—the merest thought of it

And we are remedied.

The lighting, air-conditioning, TV,

Blinds, awnings, radio,

Hi-fi: on/off, up/down, loud/soft—commit

A finger to the screen and it is so,

Our functions disembodied, virtually.
And then, outside those glass and (strange to tell)

Hand-operated heavy sliding doors

We strenuously propel

Apart to make a wall of vacant space,

The city is displayed

In panorama which our gaze explores

With an extravagance that’s half-afraid

We’ll blink and find it gone without a trace:
The glassy skyline among which St Mary’s

Presents a stone entreaty for the past;

There, skewering midair is

The tower of Centrepoint, positioned where

It claims the centre lies;

Pan right, the bridge and, not to be outclassed,

The Opera House, that permanent surprise;

The green approach to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair;
Closer, here are the docks of Woolloomooloo,

And, right below our eyes, the naval base,

At which the QM2

Appears one morning, and is gone the next,

As though it had not been,

Like something one might conjure and replace

With just a finger’s touch upon the screen—

A trick to leave us neophytes perplexed.
The light performs its spectral repertoire

From dawn all day to evening. In between

The perpendicular

And cut-out towers, insertions of midheaven

Will sometimes put on view

A slowly moving plane, which seems to mean

To glide by, not behind them, but clean through,

A floating revenant of Nine Eleven.
The harbour shifts its dazzle to and fro.

At night the Opera House appears to shine

With sunlight’s afterglow.

This hand I raise and stretch, is that to scroll

The image, or adjust

The settings to accord with our design?

Content as novices, we watch and trust

In what’s unfolding there beyond control.