Monday's Poetry: "The Secret of the Machines"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

My father was a small town merchant who made a decent living selling home appliances.  That was, of course, in the days before Walmart and the big box stores that drove America's Main Street merchants out of business.  In order to sell appliances my Dad had to be able to deliver and install them, and to make repairs himself.  Over the years that he was in business he earned the equivalent of a good college education by attending many factory-training workshops provided by the companies that made the appliances he sold.

Dad always thought that I should learn how to repair things, too, but I resisted.

Today I am home patiently waiting for a repairman to arrive and work on the refrigerator which I bought new last spring - when another repairman wasted so much time in misdiagnosing my old refrigerator that I was forced to buy a new one to keep a bunch of food from going bad.  Today I am not under the same pressure because I had the old one fixed and placed in the garage where it chugs along contentedly as my back-up icebox.

So eventually a repairman will show, on his own sweet time, and the worst that should happen to me is that I will spend an hour or so transferring food to the garage.   The new box is running, but it is making a rattle that can be heard all over the house.

As soon as that repairman leaves, I will attempt to find one to work on my washing machine which has suddenly begun leaking cold water into the tub even when the machine is off.  It is usable, but I have to remember to shut the cold water off when I finish a load.

And earlier this week I had the car and truck serviced - and now the truck has a tire going flat.

God, but I do love machines!

Today's poem is "The Secret of the Machines" by British journalist, author, and poet Rudyard Kipling.  It is an anachronistic piece that glorifies machines in an age gone by.  The poet seems to regard machines as our friends, a view that I would have trouble defending, and he also seems to think that machines operate at the pleasure of people and can always be unplugged or shut off.  Kipling wrote during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Now, in the early days of the twenty-first century, we are rapidly approaching the time (most say just over twenty years from now) when computers will have the ability to program and operate themselves.  At that point they may rapidly develop the ability to unplug or turn people off!

I will be operating out of some other reality by then, but those of you left behind will have my sincere good wishes!


The Secret of the Machines
by Rudyard Kipling

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,   

   We were melted in the furnace and the pit—   

We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,   

   We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.   

Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,

   And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:   

And now, if you will set us to our task,

   We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

      We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,   

      We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,

      We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,   

      We can see and hear and count and read and write!

Would you call a friend from half across the world?

   If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,

You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled

   Across the arch of heaven while you wait.   

Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?

   You can start this very evening if you choose,   

And take the Western Ocean in the stride

   Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!

      The boat-express is waiting your command!   

      You will find the Mauretania at the quay,

      Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand,   

      And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head   

   And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?   

Do you want to turn a river in its bed,

   Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?

Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down

   From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,   

To work the mills and tramways in your town,

   And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

      It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!

      Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake   

      As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,

      And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,   

   We are not built to comprehend a lie,

We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.

   If you make a slip in handling us you die!   

We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—

   Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!-

Our touch can alter all created things,

   We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

      Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,

      It will vanish and the stars will shine again,

      Because, for all our power and weight and size,   

      We are nothing more than children of your brain!