Steampunk

“Steampunk Clock”
Painting by Luis Cruz
From art.ekstrax.com

the automaton
sleeps in a leather valise
aboard coal fired
wagon-lits exiting
Paris for Zurich
where Boole
surreptitiously waits
in the garish
pooled gaslight
that puddles his
well disguised lab

grown impatient
with checking
rechecking
his bold philosophical
specs for the final
adjustments
the strokes
that will transform
intelligent worlds with
a lifelike machine-driven
self-thinking man

as the nearing train
mounts chugging groaning
steep Swiss elevations
he opens his pocket-fobbed
quantum clock geared
for the measure of logic
and smiles with a
mathematic knowledge
that soon will arrive
his inchoate invention
prepared to receive
its mechanical mind

what the future will hold
will be told
by new means
of computing
the physics and abstracts
that ever have challenged
organic gray brains
told by gleaming gold
ratchets and pistons
of new jewelried genius

the clatter of horsecarts
on cobblestoned lanes
makes his waiting
unbearable watching
from under the
ancient hewn eaves
of his retrofit garret
he finally spies
his reliable teamster
and rushes to take hold
the precious valise
wildly eager to usher
the Boolean offspring
of what will have been
the industrial age