THIS EXCELLENT MACHINE

By: John Lehmann
October 19, 2023

A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.

This excellent machine is neatly planned.
A child, a half-wit would not feel perplexed:
No chance to err, you simply press the
     button —
At once each cog in motion moves the next,
The whole revolves, and anything that lives
Is quickly sucked towards the running
     band,
Where, shot between the automatic knives
It’s guaranteed to finish dead as mutton.

This excellent machine will illustrate
The modern world divided into nations:
So neatly planned, that if you merely tap it
The armaments will start their
     devastations,
And though we’re for it, though we’re all
     convinced
Some fool will press the button soon or
     late,
We stand and stare, expecting to be
     minced —
And very few are asking ‘Why not scrap it?’

— I believe this was first published in 1932. I’ve seen it in the 1938 anthology Poems of Today and in Lehmann’s Collected Poems 1930-1963 (1963), etc.

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RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.