The Engineer's Poem

Elasticity,

It governs this city.

Our Buildings,

Our Bridges

Tower around us,

Monotonous.

Pushed towards the edges,

Of our world.

Covering it all.

Built up around principles

Trusted and proven,

A web of cables and beams,

Of welded seams,

Woven

About a concrete canvas.

Tension and compression hold it in balance.

A delicate dance

To avoid the Fall.

We are elastic.

It defines us,

Our feeble flesh

Like a rickety old sign

Pointing the way to our end.

Lasting only by our own stubborn design.

We bear our loads,

And spring back.

Never understanding fully

Their impact,

Their weight.

We feel their pull,

And ignore the cracks.

Like the force at a node,

We approximate our Fate.

With approximations numerical,

We do our best to understand.

The strain,

The pain.

We feel the stress of this dying land

Yet we do not yield even a fraction.

By Newton’s Third we resist

Action and reaction.

Not realising it is by our own stubbornness

That these forces still exist

So to you we call,

The great designer.

Tear down this city,

With its cold steel walls.

We pray that we no longer resist you

In those moments when you untwist us

Shape us

Form us.

Bend us.

Deform us,

With plasticity.