Machines

Disassembled, outmoded, unattended,

What used to be useful glimmers through dust,

Heaped in shop windows, multiplying shadows

After hours, so soundless that defeat

Haunts hollow ears with surges of what was,

For a time, the dirge of all unuttered.

Here lie the mechanisms past regret.

The autumn leaves will pile up to the door,

Drifts of snow will darken into cinder,

Wheels will spin and rivers freeze once more,

But if we fail to summon spring in winter

The cedars will stand for what we forget.

Machines have their own seasons, revolving

Around us, though nature is not their fulcrum.

They too move beyond repair to neglect,

But cannot die like a diving falcon

Or repeat, in the end, names that inflect

As the sum of one's parts stops working.

Unconverted by death, they know nothing

Of the glory of noise and the daily

Trade of the ugly and the beautiful

We have listened to, in stories of many

For whom engines were passions, and the feel

Of life the sense of a great sound building.