Automatous

The wheels of industry turn both day and night
with a whir of motors and a whine of engines,
the clang of metal against metal as machines
dance with machines, a dance of graceful precision
held in great concrete and steel buildings,
ballrooms of commerce.

Other machines, intelligent machines, talk to each other
in a language of ones and zeros at the speed of sound,
then transcribe all into the universal languages of numbers
and letters and other characters to be studied, analyzed,
interpreted, manipulated. These characters all mean
one thing in one way or another: Money.

Still more machines, soft machines, act with the other machines,
but these machines think and worry and fret and toil and sweat
falls from their brows during eight hour intervals that are broken
only for a brief period of replenishment via hot brown liquid
or a sandwich jammed quickly into an awaiting port hole.
For these there is no rest. For these there is no peace.