From Sabbaths 2014

IX

1

The expert on resistance to torturebecomes an expert torturer.The machine that helped a womanto do her work replaces her at work.The machine that helped a man to thinkticks on in the absence of the man.The communications technology that wasto become the concourse and meetingof all the world, bringing the longed-forpeace to all the world, becomesa war weapon to break the world in pieces.

2

Surely there is simple wrong, wrongfrom the start, but the turning wrongis worse: gains containing the seedsof loss, amenities fated to do harm.To warm our houses we set the world afire.The gullible, the frivolous, the hard of heartmake of modern miracles normalterror and perpetual war.The first robot we heard of was a bomb.

3

Will the robotic tree performthe original miracle, transforminglight into life? Will the robotic leadercome at last to achieve our objective,feed the hungry, forgive the debtors, heal the sick, give sight to the blind,release the captives, raise the dead?Or do we look for another?

4

If we surely knew that the man before us,single in the multitude, would wreckthe plane that would wreck the tower,whose fall would wreck a multitudeof living souls, who would not kill him?If we knew for certain that the one manin the cell would, if tortured, tellthe truth and save a multitude,who would not torture him?

5

After the mathematic of the Crucifixion,who would not destroy one to savea multitude, if by the destruction of oneso many reliably could be saved?But that is as numbers are, and of uswho can foretell the future of numbers?One small seed, lost in the multitude,dying in the ground, sends into lighta mighty tree. But that is the original miraclereturned once again in time, and who of uscan foretell in time the future of a miracle?

6

As the future is to fear, the ones gatherinto the many who must be killedunendingly, at endless expenditureof death for life, of money for death,of weapons for money. And the economygrows unendingly, a faith to borrowunendingly against, as the future is to fear.

7

And we who walk in darkness,the darkness we call our day, lightedby the burning world, we needthe darkness for the foretold salvation:We will save humanity by our willingnessto become inhuman. To save the worldwe await the beneficent machine.

8

O hasten, hasten, through the darkunder the dim reminding starsto find again what is small, tender, beloved,the hope and mercy of this worldat the mercy of this worldin the darkest dark, the longest night.

9

When our first grandchild cameto be with us, my father held back, unableto bring himself again to give his heartto another child, another who wouldcall forth his love, no matter the cost.And then, knowing her smallness, her helplessness,her inheritance of this world’s sorrow,he gave his heart, and so was givenwhat he had suffered longest and needed most.