Sentient Glass
I imagined that someone
Had invented sentient glass
And that we had rubbed our bodies
Up against your nightlit window.
This glass could deduce
From the very touch of our skin
How long our colons were
And how many milligrammes of bile
Spilled in the half hour
After a typical light snack
Into our swooning duodena.
It could analyse these things
And give a condensation readout
On its surface
But it could not analyse intangibles like:
We have shared each other with the glass
And we are hungry once again.
The glass would watch us eat
As, forks in hand, we would contemplate
Conditions on another planet
Where the time it takes for us to eat,
On this world,
Could be the time it takes on that world
For a pane of sentient glass to go senile.
Had invented sentient glass
And that we had rubbed our bodies
Up against your nightlit window.
This glass could deduce
From the very touch of our skin
How long our colons were
And how many milligrammes of bile
Spilled in the half hour
After a typical light snack
Into our swooning duodena.
It could analyse these things
And give a condensation readout
On its surface
But it could not analyse intangibles like:
We have shared each other with the glass
And we are hungry once again.
The glass would watch us eat
As, forks in hand, we would contemplate
Conditions on another planet
Where the time it takes for us to eat,
On this world,
Could be the time it takes on that world
For a pane of sentient glass to go senile.
'Sentient Glass' was first published in Jazztown (1991), Raven Arts Press, Dublin.
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