In the year 1901
on the floor of the Aegean Sea
a diver found the lump of
something unimaginable,
unthinkable, unfathomable,
an intricate mechanism
indistinguishable
from anything of value
until technology
revealed the workings
of a complex mechanical
computer capable of predicting
with perfect accuracy the
swirling of the cosmos,
the relative position of stars
and planets for any year
entered with the turn of a handle,
a symphony of
gears, levers and inter-connected
cam shafts, astonishing
and thousands of years
before our own.
The only thing it could not
predict and failed to grasp
utterly, the day on which a
storm would send it to the bottom
and transform it into a mirror.
♠