All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

 

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Richard Brautigan

Photo by Vernon Merritt III/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

        Richard Brautigan was born in Tacoma, Washington. He had a difficult childhood, and he did not attend college. When he was in his 20s, he moved to San Francisco, California. Robert Novak wrote in Dictionary of Literary Biography that “Brautigan is commonly seen as the bridge between the Beat Movement of the 1950s and the youth revolution of the 1960s.” A so-called guru of Sixties counterculture, Brautigan wrote of nature, life, and emotion; his unique imagination provided the unusual settings for his themes. Critics frequently compared his work to that of such writers as Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Hemingway, Donald Barthelme, and Mark Twain. Considered by most critics to be his best novel, Trout Fishing in America (written in 1961 but not published until 1967) established Brautigan as a major force in the mainstream literary scene. His novel In Watermelon Sugar (1968) was also widely celebrated. Brautigan is the author of the poetry collections June 30th, June 30th (1978), Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork (1975), The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968), Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt (1970), and The San Francisco Weather Report (1969), among others.

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        In case you wonder what brought this poem to mind, it was Mike Adams at Brighteon University. 

        
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