Forevertron
I have built a machine to visit the stars.
I have built a machine to outlast the stars.
There is a glass ball inside a copper egg.
There are dynamos and turbines, Tesla coils and magnets.
There is a boy in Brooklyn, Wisconsin
and a boy in Eddington, England.
They are the same boy. There is a man in a hat
in Baraboo. They are all named Tom.
They are all named Dr. Evermor, which is now
their real name. Queen Victoria is watching
among the giant insects, the fiddle-shaped birds.
The stray voltage goes in the stray voltage
cages, all silver, red and blue. The music
will signal the ascent. This is the Overlord
Master Control, this is the Graviton,
these are the Celestial Listening Ears.
When you ask me what has changed my life,
I tell you motors, generators, compressors, transformers;
I tell you boilers, pumps, transmitters and flywheels.
When you ask me if I found them I say no,
I rescued them.
Norman Finkelstein, "Forevertron" from The Ratio of Reason to Magic. Copyright © 2016 by Norman Finkelstein. Reprinted by permission of Dos Madres Press.
Source:
The Ratio of Reason to Magic
(Dos Madres Press, 2016)
