(In which there is a boy, a man, and a curious box.)

I can’t imagine what the muzhiks would have thought of this.
They’d probably have me burned
The boy is not listening to the man;
He is, in a mixture of fear, wonder,
And no small measure of puzzlement,
Utterly transfixed by the box
Which sits between him and the man,
Who is fluttering his hands in some pantomime of supplication
Nearly yet never quite touching the strange box
Which sprouts two pieces of wire,
One pointing straight up toward God,
The other looped like a noose.
The man manipulates his fingers in delicate movements,
As if he was playing a pianissimo movement on a piano
Whose keyboard is embedded somewhere in the very air itself,
But the sounds… vaguely familiar, to be sure:
He hears the barking of a small dog, perhaps,
Or something much like the faraway crow of a rooster
Filtered through the half-tones of the last moments of a dream,
Yet not quite of this world or this life,
And, unconsciously, for his mother is of the old peasant stock,
The boy crosses himself, and hears himself say
In a voice not quite his own,
That surely it requires a miracle or some sort of magic
To make such a wonder as this machine.
The man stops his gesturing for a moment to look at the boy,
And then he bursts out laughing.
I didn’t figure out how it works so I could build this;
I built it so I could figure out how it works.