Self-Operating Machines
       

Everything is a clock inside, geared
and oiled to sing and turn— the body,

even, no different than that of medieval
mechanical monkeys lining the bridge

in the park at Hesdin, re-pelted in badger
fur every year. For the surface of life

runs by a mere series of cause and effects,
buried beneath with care and craft.

In grief, the gears and springs spin on.
The water pumps through the pipes,

and the body moves. We were all once part
of a set of nesting dolls, a robot designed

in the body of another robot, and as always,
mechanical replication fails— the shell

falls away, rusts, decays. An engineered failure.
Early automata were considered miracles,

but of course, had no sense of their makers.
They never saw their mother's body

graying on display, or felt themselves
unmade by absence, as if a spring

let loose a monkey's howl
so real it sounds like lament.

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Copyright © 2021 Rebecca Morgan Frank All rights reserved
from Oh You Robot Saints!
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission