The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope

Ray Bradbury

• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781635762181
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Rejoice in the strange and the ordinary in this contemplative collection of poetry from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451.

One of the most well-known figures in modern fantasy and science fiction, often credited for heralding the genre into the mainstream, Ray Bradbury delights readers time and time again with writing that pushes the boundaries of reality. In this outstanding collection, Bradbury delivers poem after poem full of hope, fear, philosophy and faith. As in his work of speculative fiction, Bradbury's unique perspective on humanity graces every page.

From technology to Ty Cobb, strawberry shortcake and death, this selection delivers some of Bradbury's best. Some of his most beloved poetry, including "They Have Not Seen the Stars," "This Attic Where the Meadow Greens," "There Are No Ghosts in Catholic Spain," "Farewell Summer," "Once the Years Were Numerous and the Funerals Few," "Doing Is Being," and "We Are The Reliquaries of Lost Time," is featured.

Humorous, thoughtful, and every bit as out of this world as readers have come to expect from the legend, this is a must-have for collectors and new readers alike.

"Let us now praise Ray Bradbury, the uncrowned poet laureate of science fiction."— The Times

Pope Android Seventh

Pope Android Seventh!

He rides, he soars, he flies!

He husbands comets, frozen brides

Who, raped by sun, do run in ruins

Round our cosmic clock.

While taking stock he strides

An attic universe,

Recircuits trash made fabulous with time

Confesses light-year dusts that radio-whisper sin;

Rushing they know not where,

Knowing not where they’ve been

The Holy Roman robot sifts back our stuff and bones

In Sunday-drowsed collections,

Enzymed resurrections of birth

Half-lost, half-found between

The rimless rim above and micro-scene;

Thus grounding us in liberal wrecks

Of chat and converse, arguments long chopped at knees:

Did we ape down from trees?

Are we bright soul most glorious concave

Or mere raw flesh, convex?

And what is sight?

A mind-dreamed fibrillation of lost stars?

Does Mars exist? Is all we see real, true?

They hint the sky above’s not blue at all,

But leans into a blue from light diffusion.

Illusion is all, the rapt confusions gutter and go

To dust. Can Android Seventh’s lust of circuitings

Run with his vacuum mouth to ingasp night and outpour light

And know more than we know?

We wish it so, and send him on his swift

Miraculous missions to lift holy catcher’s mitt

And muff hot stars,

Encircle sun.

Dip in its soundless fusions to fetch back

In dearly full-cupped hands from burning brink

A drink of gods, or God, thus solar-fire we drink

And feed our flesh machineries of blood

With good that pours from sun, much more than good.

What else?

Why, Pope Android the Seventh packs with him

A poem of John Paul First,

Pacelli (Pius Twelfth)’s dry thirst for Bulls.

John Twenty-Third’s warm cantaloupe-round smile.

He relic-carries popes from all the seasons,

Their sweet reasonings are lubricant to him,

This mendicant of space, supple his limbs,

Because the thigh-knee-leg-ankle bones of

Pius Sixth (the Quick!)

Run jungle gyms within his armored pod,

While from his diode beehive head Jehovah hums

Beethoven’s hymns, or Mozart’s tunes.

His enterprise? to flying buttress far Andromeda with Bach,

Prop up the skies, anoint lost moons.

His halo? Saturn’s rings! His orb? red eye of Jupiter.

His holy water? meteorfalls of asteroid.

The void his altar-high-throne-sepulchre and shrine,

Where Holy Ghost snows by to show pale Hailey’s face,

A look of premonition in its panicked eyes,

Light-year remembrance in its silent-wailing mouth,

To ask for wine.

For this we send our papal robot there?

For more. We hang on air a tapestry of will,

Our dumbest fancies fished into a sieve

We give, computer-multiplied to space.

His papal tongue remembers and then sounds

The tidal whisper from the Galilean shore

Where Christ’s footprints ascend the April winds

And are no more.

From bored Earth filled with doubting Thomases,

Undoubting Android Seventh, fired with promises,

Ascends, and his The Sermon on the Mountain in tapes,

Plus other gifts of hope to hopeless apes,

Who would not apes remain,

And lambs and wolves will change and share and rise

On worlds we cannot know,

Because our Holy Robot blessed them so: “Now, go!”

And there they go!

For reference, our miracle,

That from brute seas we rose on land,

Gave it some neighborhood constructions,

Towns and wars and much destruction, yes,

Then—final prize! Swift towers of flame and—lo!

Up space, the marvelous monkeys rise!

But Android Seventh flies first!

He goes to prepare the way,

He sifts, he saves, he gives.

Where Android moves,

Christ lives.

They wait together.

Ten thousand priests

On Earth will fade while celebrating feasts

Yet this pope yeasts on Matthew, John, Paul, Mark,

On cosmic balconies gone dark beyond Andromeda

He’ll beckon us as beasts

And bless our bloodied hands and wash them clean.

He’ll trumpet call ...

Table of contents

• The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope
• Go Not With Ruins in Your Mind
• Poem From a Train Window
• Nor Is the Aim of Man to Stay Beneath a Stone
• Joy Is the Grace We Say to God
• They Have Not Seen the Stars
• This Attic Where the Meadow Greens
• Abandon in Place
• The Great Man Speaks (famous last words)
• Shakespeare the Father, Freud the Son
• A Miracle of Popes, All With One Face!
• The Bike Repairmen
• The East Is Up!
• If Peaches Could Be Painters
• Once the Years Were Numerous and the Funerals Few
• Satchmo Saved!
• God Blows the Whistle
• The Infirmities of Genius
• Farewell Summer
• The Dogs of Mesopotamia—Dyed by Spring
• Two Impressionists
• And Yet the Burning Bush Has Voice
• To an Early Morning Darning-Needle Dragonfly
• Poem Written on a Train Just Leaving a Small Southern Town
• Too Much
• There Are No Ghosts in Catholic Spain
• I Am God’s Greatest Basking Hound
• Doing Is Being
• Ode to an Utterance by Norman Corwin, Who Punned the First Line, and Must Suffer the Rest
• Nectar and Ambrosia
• We Are the Reliquaries of Lost Time
• Anybody Who Can Make Great Strawberry Shortcake Can’t Be All Bad
• And Have You Seen God’s Birds Collide?
• You Can’t Go Home Again, Not Even If You Stay There!
• Schliemann
• Of What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come
• Within a Summer Frame
• Ode to Ty Cobb, Who Stole First Base from Second
• GBS and the Loin of Pork
• Let Us Live But Safely, No Bright Flag Be Ours
• Everyone’s Got to Be Somewhere
• The Past Is the Only Dead Thing That Smells Sweet
• Ode to Trivia
• Good Shakespeare’s Son, the Typing Ape
• Que Bella! The Flagella of the Beasts
• Pope Android Seventh
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