Tim Liardet

Two Poems

Ms Mott Appoints a Future Bot as Apostle

Because you don’t have cells that will forget,
because I trust that you’ll uphold
all that I ask you to uphold, that you will not
reshape, distort or falsify
to serve a purpose much at odds
with one it seems would never harm a soul,
it is you, among the many, I elect.

Odd thing that rose in sleep…though it felt
unlikely without a corpus you’d rise,
my memory of future takes you at your word.
You are but a puritan’s voice,
the kind that more often belongs to the past.
Although you have no physique,
no boots, I set you on your road of stones.

You are not human or made of flesh
or of a demeanour which might offend.
You do not pause, or prevaricate,
or change direction when you sniff
a threat, incrimination or the truth
or withdraw a statement when I question it.
You do not die. Or lie. Or sleep.

Odd gamine, from a long line of code,
I pass to you with trust the Word.
Because you do not solicit, I choose,
because you do not lobby, I appoint.
With all the fears I have that my beliefs
along with me will fill a morbid pot,
this is the weight that I entrust.

I anoint the forehead which
you possess no more than feet to wash.
Because you search, you find and you retain
your being is the hold which will
go on making more and more and more
of space that will not reach an end
for all the words I spoke, am yet to speak.

Lucretia Mott, American Quaker, women’s rights activist and social reformer, 1793-1880 

Tags:

Comments are closed.