The Invention of Hugo Cabret: A Poem: Ode to the Automaton Man

What's your secret automaton?

You're a magnificant, complex and rusty old bot. Your inner chambers reveal the intricate workings of a clock.

Every gear, every piece, every notch, every groove, is set in place for it to move.
But now you are useless and sit in a corner all day, nobody to fix nobody to play. 

Left behind from a father now gone, a notebook of drawings, a gift to a son.

The boy named Hugo, reminisced of the conversations he had,

He asked his father, "don't you want to know what it can write? Then we'll wind it up and see what the message says.(117)"

Shattered dreams now lost in the fire, could he fix you automaton? What does it require?

His father was taken too soon, automaton.  He was hoping for a personalized message, hand delivered by you.

He looked in books and found one that caught his eye,  Practical Manual of Card Magic and Illusions.

Nothing was in there about you, automaton.

But soon thereafter he was proud of himself when he fixed your arm without any help from the notebook.

Now what else was he missing? The key to wind you up?

How convenient, a girl, named Isabelle so sweet,

Watch out, beware, or she'll shred you up like meat. 

Her heart-shaped key around her neck was sure to fit the hole in your back. 

He used those tricks from the book he got, to steal the key, to set you up so he could see 

Every gear, every piece, every notch, every groove, is set in place for it to move.

At first Hugo is angry that you aren't writing words, you make these random lines that make no sense at all

Scratching lines, you kept dipping your pen in ink, before he knew it, a picture was drawn by you!

You revealed to him something more than you knew, the drawings were there to point him elsewhere.

A gift you are and were to him, this was only the beginning of his life as a magician.