the oracle

They feed their questions into it and do not speak them.
The hum of the electronic brain invades the neat hall
and four minutes later flowers the perfect solution.

Then they know what to do. These men whose brains
have placed each cog and valve without a fault
beam at the end of the machine and shyly confess

the whole thing would have taken them much longer
or perhaps their answer would have been postponed.
They rummage out other more difficult cases

and wait for the answer in confused excitement;
again it emerges in homo-mechanic language.
Happy and confident they give us a chance.

We are much honoured; we hold conferences and
discuss what the most fitting question should be;
when we find it we march and surround the machine:

the problem is fed in, the drone irregularly
distends, no answer is laid. We grow old and visit
everyday the clean, compact brain and wait.

-Taner Baybars, Turkish-Cypriot poet (b. 1936)


I found a slim red-brown softcover, "modern POETS: british and american," published 1966, inscribed on the title page with my mother's maiden name, English IV, Rm 314, 10/11/68. Am continually amazed that she was a real person then, that objects like this exist to testify. Shorthand, sideways, blue ink, page 64: "Way down below the ocean/Where I want to be./She may be."


(from my favorite Jeunet film ever, La cite des enfants perdus)