A friend was teaching at a Waldorf school and told me that when the students studied astronomy, they sang songs and recited poems about the planets. I asked if they had songs and poems when they studied mechanics. She told me they don't, so I thought I'd write a series of odes to the six simple machines. Here's one for the lever:
The lever must be the simplest simple machine,
as simple as (if you’ll excuse me saying so)
picking your nose. And yet Archimedes—
the guy who jumped out of his bathtub and shouted,
“Eureka!”—that same Archimedes said: Give me
a place to stand and I will move the world. So he knew.
He knew the power of the simplest simple machine.
But also: he needed that place to stand, he said.
Sure, a place to stand, we all want that. And for him,
the earth was the center of the cosmos. So how far out
do you have to go to get that “place to stand?”
Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover is completely
outside the world, but he doesn’t need a lever. He’s divine.
But what’s the place for the man who lept out of his tub?
What’s the place for the man who wants to move the world
with just a stick? Outside the earth, but still in the world,
wearing a space helmet and a toga. He’ll do it. Give him
a place, he’ll do it. He’ll move the world with one big shove.
Only the place to stand, it’s all anyone needs.
We all need it, just a place to stand.
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