THE COUNT

 I walked into an ancient computer,

In an echoing suburban sports hall,

I watched its components all working

And they looked back at me.

I watched them processing the data,

Which was my task to see.

Paper data arrived in boxes

It was spilt out onto table tops.

A component checked around carefully

For data missed or dropped.

Human hands sorted the data,

By human eyes each item was seen

Could there be fewer errors

If fed through a digital machine?

Bribery blackmail and prejudice

Can alter what humans do,

Machines are not intelligent enough,

But they can be corrupted as well.

Waged workers sitting at tables

Are the ancient computers parts

They might care about democracy

Since their votes will be counted too,

But a soulless machine

Just rapidly does whatever it’s going to do

Counting votes, dropping bombs

Or playing a stupid tune

Or all of these things at once

And it does not care because it cannot care

About anything that it has done.