For Prophet
An Ekphrastic Sonnet
By D. J. ReddallPublished 24 days ago • Updated 24 days ago • 1 min read
Camillo Miola, "The Oracle," c. 1840-1917
Your trivial queries annoy the gods!
Horse races, politics, lotteries, girls;
I am not here to calculate the odds
But to read the future as it unfurls
Behold, what approaches is passing strange:
Foolish mortals will teach language to speak
Weird machines they will carefully arrange
To let words themselves form patterns oblique
Faith in all human oracles will fade
All dying animals are fallible
Pronouncements made by objects we have made
Seem so objective, and thus, plausible
I see a future that worships machines
Tools will be prophets, no longer mere means
About the Creator
D. J. Reddall
I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.
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Comments (3)
An insightful poem, but should be cast in present tense. Just say NO to Copilot!!!
Was I correct to detect intentional ambiguity in your clever title?
There is a sculptor and commercial set designer whose work I love. She is always exploring the intersection between humans/language/music/technology. Several years ago, before AI was gaining traction, she partnering with Google on a project. They fed 18th century English poems into a database, then asked people to « donate » a word. The computer would then generate a couplet which would be added to a collective poem. You could add your portrait as well if you wanted. I often wonder what she thinks of that performance art piece now- you can still participate. Es Devlin Poem Portraits. https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/poemportraits