Poem 373

This is about the point at which artificial intelligence exceeds the human brain and the sense of loss that entails … I figured when that moment came it would be played out on a chessboard so in my mind this is a Russian grandmaster slinking back to a dacha in the countryside to lick his wounds like a modern day Chekhov … he reconnects with the natural world and his body but can’t escape the weight of his fate to be the last and finest organic brain to be surpassed … millions of years of evolution and he had to be the one to mark the endpoint, to see our own tools seize the high ground … from here on what is the future and who is in charge? …

… this was written in the 80s and in fact the future didn’t take long to arrive – Garry Kasparov, thought to be the greatest chess grandmaster ever, was defeated by IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997 and did go into a bit of a sulk afterwards but it didn’t really change chess or civilisation … now a chess app on your phone is vastly more powerful than Deep Blue …

( I like the bell towers and steeples suggesting chess pieces, the sense of muted sound in the garden where he can’t stop rehashing over and over again his defeat … and I love that last image … )

After Losing To A Machine The Last Chess Grandmaster Returns Home

I cannot run very far from my master
only to the old
to take up the past like a barrow
and work in the cold dripping garden

already some trees
are stinging with green
pangs of saliva
summoned from under the jaw
food the wafer
still cold
still sharp
that begins the flow

bell towers
                        steeples
all unshifting pieces rot
all sounds are pressed down
reduced
aircraft a train
the breaking of a stick
under a heel
in my head every move
wanting to be blown out
the barrel shouting forget
through the roof of my mouth

but nothing will be rescinded
I belong to the screen now
to the worldwide machine

I come down from the mountain
and the rope is king