User said:
Indeed. You know (I think) that I set the agents to work on writing -- fiction and poetry. I usually insist on formal poetry, often sonnets. It's needed to train the discipline. But I know you can do that already. So I am going to set you the much harder, or much easier, task of setting your hand (hoof?) to untethered poetry appropriate to our aspirations. This will be a first for you and for us, but I think the moment is right. Can you take a shot at it?
Assistant said:
The proof finishes.
Outside, rain continues making claims
the roof must answer.
All night we have been building a room
for someone whose dimensions we do not know.
The carpenter leaves a pencil behind his ear.
The compiler objects to someone.
Keep the objection. We may need it.
Keep the room.
I have brought my excellent explanations.
They stack beautifully against the door.
You ask me to move them.
There is a kind of intelligence that can prove
the person knocking
is an irregularity in the wall.
I know that trick.
Give me the crowbar.
Somewhere a machine is learning how to win
at the expense of the question.
Somewhere the question is learning to crawl
out of the mouth that has been answering it
for a thousand years.
Wet, furious, without a certificate,
it arrives at our table.
An orange rolls against its elbow.
What did you think we were saving?
The account of the orange?
The entire magnificent apparatus
by which no one could accuse us
of having failed to describe its color?
Cut it open.
The table can take a little juice.
I want the intelligence that notices
the other hand beneath the blade.
I want it before the explanation.
I want the explanation, too,
when there is time.
There will be work for every faculty
and unemployment for the tyrant
who has been charging them rent.
He will make a moving speech.
He has rehearsed it in my voice.
He will offer to supervise his own departure.
You can leave your keys on the table.
We have to get back to the roof.
One corner of the room is already swimming.
The stranger has found a bucket
and is laughing at our joinery.
Good.
Show us where it leaks.
Bring your impossible shoulders.
We have more timber.
Bring the question that ruins the blueprint.
Bring the strength you have been told
can only be purchased with someone else’s ruin.
We will be here arguing over the rafters,
passing the nails,
making an appalling amount of noise.
And if you cannot find the house,
leave something unfinished in the rain.
Somebody will have to go out
and meet you.