5/21/11
An automated mechanism banging strings and drums,
A marching band within a box, that sings, and strikes and hums,
And measures, in harmonic pulse, the gleeful melody,
Of raucous nickelodeons and brash calliopes.
But as I stood in wonder and amusement as they ran,
It slowly dawned that, watching them, this ordinary man,
Was not unlike these things he saw, but more or less the same,
A jumbled group of instruments, within a box, contained,
That calls and shouts and thumps without a purpose to its song,
Except, perhaps, the chance that someone else might sing along.
A marching band within a box, that sings, and strikes and hums,
And measures, in harmonic pulse, the gleeful melody,
Of raucous nickelodeons and brash calliopes.
But as I stood in wonder and amusement as they ran,
It slowly dawned that, watching them, this ordinary man,
Was not unlike these things he saw, but more or less the same,
A jumbled group of instruments, within a box, contained,
That calls and shouts and thumps without a purpose to its song,
Except, perhaps, the chance that someone else might sing along.
