The incompetence in the poem was all my own, not a plumber's. Being working class when a pipe leaks the first impulse isn't to blow a week's wages on a plumber. The point of the poem is I might know what a clepsydra is and I might be able to get at least one 'p' in each line but I'm too incompetent to stop the damned leak myself.
I'll bet the plumber I know who is an expert in Bela Bartok's music ( no, he's not Hungarian) just might know what a clepsydra is. He'd certainly know enough to look it up. And HE could fix the pipe too.