Lay for the Day 21st November

Thomas Edison announced his invention of a phonograph or “talking machine” on this day in 1877.

From the book of Praises:

13. Of Phonography

Take the heavy base of the jumped-up juice
squeezed from a long-gone-underground jungle,
simmer, mix and cool it, mould and brand it
with the fine labyrinthine groove that goes
through darkness to silence, counter-clockwise.

Find an old man banging his meal-ticket
music-box with a dying fall, and kids
shouting to shake their elders’ approval
down like peaches, who would be studs and kings.

Make a million of a few moments,
winding notched spirals through our memory;
build monuments of breath from a short-lived
addict emptying his lungs and spirit
into tintinnabulating alloy.

John Gibben
from Collected Poems

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