Perfect Machine
 © Beth Roberts
The makers of the perfect machine understood
memory: in the beginning were the good
voices that bevelled our eyes and filled
our ears at ground level with the world's
own curvature,
gave us the lure
of touch; and at the other end grief,
the need--gang bang at Lethe--
to be the death of grief.

The perfect-machine-makers had read
up on remembrances: from our parents' bed
to the risk we take when we mistake
night for a meadow, a gale for a lark.
What imagination!
In commemoration
of faulted hearts they tilted the machination
of love--imperfect provision--
toward a more perfect improvisation.

Those who made the machine perfect knew,
concerning souvenirs, a thing or two.
We want the parts of the body to wear,
like those gilded strands of Shire's hair
stolen from the filed
where the horses yield
all day their quivering hides to the lonely.
They drew our field of vision out from
the field. Go and find your own piece of pony.