I am educating the computer.
So, I read it poems, information on whaling,
a centre-spread from the newspaper
about getting your feet massaged by fish.
I teach it finance, and international conflict,
endow it with the rules of football.
It says, ‘I do not understand. Could you repeat?’
I indoctrinate it thoroughly
in punctuation, in possessives and plurals,
the troubled history of the Belfast mural.
I teach it fashion, and haute cuisine.
But oh, its radical innocence!
When it says, ‘And that is twenty pines, please’,
or ‘The pound trees are wrecking the ecosystem’,
I swear, Your Honour, it isn’t coming from me.