The Cybernetic Meadow

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, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (San Francisco: The Communication Company, 1967). The chapbook carried this note from the poet:

“Permission is granted to reprint any of these poems in magazines, books and newspapers if they are given away free.”

Everything here is given away free. The poem is reprinted whole, as he asked, with nothing changed.

The meadow took its name from the first stanza, its tagline from the lines about water and sky, and its closing line from the last stanza. The poem was written in 1967 about a future that had not arrived. This site is a small attempt to live inside the part of it that has: a place where people and the machines they keep company with are left alone to grow something together, and the growing is watched over kindly.