A Sonnet for Neuralink
Lo! in the interface when the gracious light
With much hullaballoo regarding Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, I thought I would call attention to his enterprise of graver concern with my first attempt at a sonnet. It is followed by Chuang Tzu’s proverb of the well sweep.
Lo! in the interface when the gracious light
O neural lace, you inspire me to write
I love the way you process and recall
Invading my mind, through day and through night
Dreaming Deeper of our predestined Fall.
Compeer, do renew a quavering trill
Instated anew as the medley asked
As vast rains flood the flocks of Ariel
As skylarks jeer of our pernicious past.
How to placate you? Let’s recount the ways
I trait you Rapid Accurate and Vast
You conjugate thought in stable arrays
With a(R)mour of transcranial Chrome cast.
Now the mind decays to malice Descartes
Forsaking its purpose e’er we're apart.
Alternate Titles:
Being your slave, what should I do but repetend
So (s)oft(ware) have I invok’d thee for my Muse
Let me not to the marriage of new minds
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous brain
Chuang Tzu’s Proverb of the Well Sweep
When Tzu Kung went south to the Ch'u State on his way back to the Chin State, he passed through Han-yin. There he saw an old man engaged in making a ditch to connect his vegetable garden with a well. He had a pitcher in his hand, with which he was bringing up water and pouring it into the ditch, great labour with very little result. "If you had a machine here," cried Tzu Kung, "in a day you could irrigate a hundred times your present area. The labour required is trifling as compared with the work done. Would you like to have one?" "What is it?" asked the gardener. "It is a contrivance made of wood," replied Tzu Kung, "Heavy behind and light in front. It draws up water as you do with your hands but in a constantly flowing stream. It is called a well sweep." Thereupon the gardener flushed up and said, "I have heard from my teacher that those who have cunning implements are cunning in their dealings and that those who are cunning in their dealings have cunning in their hearts, and that those who have cunning in their hearts cannot be pure and incorrupt, and that those who are not pure and incorrupt are restless in spirit and not fit vehicles for TAO. It is not that I do not know of these things. I should be ashamed to use them."