The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope - Ray Bradbury

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href="#litres_trial_promo">Of What is Past, or Passing, or to Come

       Within a Summer Frame

       Ode to Ty Cobb, Who Stole First Base from Second

       GBS and the Loin of Pork

       Let Us Live But Safely, No Bright Flag Be Ours

       Everyone’s Got to Be Somewhere

       The Past Is the Only Dead Thing That Smells Sweet

       Ode to Trivia

       Good Shakespeare’s Son, the Typing Ape

       Que Bella! The Flagella of the Beasts

       Pope Android Seventh

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       About the Author

       Also by the Author

       About the Publisher

      Haunted Computer, Android Pope,

      One serves data, the other hope.

      The late-night ghosts of man’s dire needs

      Are snacks on which computer feeds

      To harvest zeros, sum the sums,

      Knock something wicked ere it comes,

      And drop dumb evil to its knees

      With inked electric snickersnees.

      While Android Pope takes up from there,

      Where physics stops mid-flight, mid-air,

      There Papa’s primed electric mind

      Grows faith in countries of the blind.

      Where mass and gravity bulk huge—

      Andromeda its centrifuge—

      Or matter dwindles to mere flea,

      There Android Pope makes papal tea

      To serve to doubtful Thomas me

      And thee and thine and thine and thee;

      Last suppers his to circuit there

      Where physics loses self in air,

      And man surprised by large or small

      Sees naught beyond the two at all.

      That is the moment where, well-met,

      Electric Pope/Computer fret

      Where stuff gives up its ways and means

      And emptiness fills in-betweens

      Where label-less the mystery goes

      In veils and prides of cosmic snows

      Which rationed out by God beyond

      Are light-year sea and lake and pond

      Which shallow are but drowned in deeps’

      Computer mind that finds and keeps

      But cannot answer final thirst:

      Which, egg or chicken, arrived first?

      The primal motive hides in stars

      Where astronauts in rocket cars

      Will never solve it, so bright Pope

      With fireworks inside for hope,

      With tapes for tripes, A.C.-D.C.

      Speaks metaphors from Galilee

      And bakes good bread and serves a wine

      That bloods the soul most super-fine

      And emptiness fills up with words

      Like flocking flights of firebirds

      That move and motion, merge and mull

      So men gone empty now are full.

      Yet, all mysterious remains,

      So man stands out in ghosting rains

      And makes umbrellas with machines

      Half-satisfied with in-betweens,

      His life twin mysteries given hope

      By Ghost Computer, Android Pope.

      Go not with ruins in your mind

      Or beauty fails; Rome’s sun is blind

      And catacomb your cold hotel

      Where should-be heaven’s could-be hell.

      Beware the temblors and the flood

      That time hides fast in tourist’s blood

      And shambles forth from hidden home

      At sight of lost-in-ruins Rome.

      Think on your joyless blood, take care,

      Rome’s scattered bricks and bones lie there

      In every chromosome and gene

      Lie all that was, or might have been.

      All architectural tombs and thrones

      Are tossed to ruin in your bones.

      Time earthquakes there all life that grows

      And all your future darkness knows,

      Take not these inner ruins to Rome,

      A sad man wisely stays at home;

      For if your melancholy goes

      Where all is lost, then your loss grows

      And all the dark that self employs

      Will teem—so travel then with joys.

      Or else in ruins consummate

      A death that waited long and late,

      And all the burning towns of blood

      Will shake and fall from sane and good,

      And you with ruined sight will see

      A lost and ruined Rome. And thee?

      Cracked statue mended by noon’s light

      Yet innerscaped with soul’s midnight.

      So go not traveling with mood

      Or lack of sunlight in your blood,

      Such traveling has double cost,

      When you and empire both are lost.

      When your mind storm-drains catacomb,

      And all seems graveyard rock in Rome—

      Tourist,

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