Glass from the Ashes

A small laboratory in south London on a cold December night, rain on the black window, warm light from a green-shaded desk lamp onto a scarred wooden bench, on a folded white cloth a flattened, wavy and twisted glass tube of a television camera, melted out of shape, milky translucent with streaks of yellow, brown, pink and green-blue, both ends knobbly and sooty grey-green, beside it an intact tube of the same kind, a long clear glass cylinder with a silvery metal coating inside, a plain brown cardboard box with its lid off, two hands in rolled white shirt sleeves turning the melted tube under the lamp, every surface plain and unmarked.