Its hands are spinning, spinning, like the wheels.
It cannot sleep or for a moment stay,
It is a thing like me, and does not feel.
It throbs as tho’ my heart were beating there—
A heart? My heart? I know not what it means.
The clock ticks, and below I strive and stare.
And so we lose the hour. We are machines.
Noon calls a truce, an ending to the sound,
As if a battle had one moment stayed—
A bloody field! The dead lie all around;