A jet black shellac record spins
seventy-eight times a minute.
Its label bears a lady ’round the pin:
She strums her lyre pictured on it.

It’s a flat earth of forgotten tunes
that spins on an axis of steel
through heavens lit by a lyrical moon
filled with the stars of bygone years.

The label’s lady of the lyre
smiles up from her grooved time machine,
her strums reverse the stars’ funeral pyres:
On each rotation her lyre gleams.

Beyond the grave, voices I hear
defy the dark passage of time:
They sing, resurrected from yesteryear.
Her lyre scores each lyrical line.

Each scratchy hiss and tiny pop
I hear from the disc’s dust and scars
reminds me of a radio telescope
that points up to distant quasars.

Alas, the needle drifts further on
‘til it reaches the groove’s final string
and then the tonearm waits for a new dawn
when this time machine once more sings.