Abel Melveny

I bought every kind of machine that’s known —
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers —
And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped and battered,
For I had no sheds to store them in,
And no use for most of them.
And toward the last, when I thought it over,
There by my window, growing clearer
About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
And looked at one of the mills I bought —
Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,
As things turned out, and I never ran —
A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
And eager to do its work,
Now with its paint washed off —
I saw myself as a good machine
That Life had never used.

by Edgar Lee Masters