[32] The Boy and His Machine, Michael T. Smith

 

The boy was eight, or so we had divined.

And the cogs that wobbled around his head

gave him stamped thoughts society approved

(a steel temperament, oh what mettle makes).

A body of pipes, a corporal map,

the intestines of a linguistic “good.”

He was flawless to the oedipal eye

a line marked perfect on graphing paper.

But with three thousand open arms outstretched

he reached for life, but life had run away

in march with his metronomical pulse,

sounding Hammer, sickle, and tambourine.

For Lotman’s son’s a foreigner to truth,

a system built of maps sans human ruth.