What is Made

I met the other day alone, An inventor on the street. Me he invited to his shop Where his progress I could meet. His workshop just bounced and bubbled And turned out whimsical chance. No malice could I detect In his wingéd ignorance. He showed me all that he had built, A surplus of useful things, Keys, robots, and a little scope For revealing times yet unseen. Splendorous was this looking glass Though he shrugged it dubious There in its mirrors I could see Brilliant future soon to be us. Though his shop brimmed with inventions, He had so much more idea. Genius, said he, with plan to give, Would find Earth’s panacea. He boasted he would build a giant Upon which science could stand And use his broad, branching shoulders To extend the reach of man. From that high perch, like a child we’d sit, Enthralled by each and all, Reaching, touching, grasping the world, Until we’d lose balance and fall. For then I remembered the scene Within the man’s looking glass Where from a high city we ruled And determined what would pass. We raised great frames, towering masts, Scraped the clouds with our steel. We rolled out cement tentacles And shortened Infinity’s wheel. Oceans balked at our vibrant song, Still forest and prairie cowered. We suffocated blue, blue sky And bragged our genius and power. I asked his leave, and left his shop, Awash in uncertainty. I wandered down the dusky street, Doubting more man’s greatest deeds. I began to despise our streets. From our red bricks and mortar, To solid steel, perfect plastic, Nature’s life grows only shorter. I fumed on that I could not tame, Ego, not satiated, And horror of man’s creation, Forming that which I hated. But then, on the street, a beggar, Calm and sad, but yet smiling, For he lived each day to survive, Distracted not by time’s ring. Though he sat on bricks laid by man, I gave to him a pound. “Why do you show such compassion, When my sires killed the ocean’s sound?” “I saw in the world, what they have done, And know it as our evil. But the deeds are not born from you. To good, there be no upheaval.”