the old ones.

these grainy tactile films take contact
pull it into your sight and sing it out
it plays without triteness or fickle guile
the people are commiserative, flawed and bright
and as they flicker by, they are winning,
without nostalgia or irony.

'plot for days' she comments
smirking at this line or that
the dialogue is tense, or sometimes far fetched
but its exactly what fits, and it does
the particular oldness of it, the forgotten wit
and even the new talkies owe them heaps of craft and gold.