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Poetry from THE ZONE
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Old Robots Are The Worst
by Bruce Boston
Lurching down the stairs,
asking questions twice,
pacing in lopsided circles
as they speculate aloud
on the cycles of man,
the transpiration of tragedy,
debating the industrial revolution
and its ultimate unravelling
in sonorous undertones.
And all the while
they are talking and pacing
and avoiding our calls,
we must wait and listen,
annoyed, yet with increasing
wonder at the depth and breadth
of their encyclopaedic knowledge,
the strained eclectic range
of their misunderstandings.
And all the while
their tedious palaver grows
more sophistic and abstruse,
the nictitating shutters
of their eyes send and receive
signals we have yet to translate,
a cyberglyph of a language
composed of tics and winks
and lightning exclamations.
At last they come to answer,
to wheel us to the elevators,
and you know, despite their
incompetence and intransigence,
beyond their endless babbling,
one gets attached to the old things,
inured to their clank and shuffle,
accustomed to the slow caress
of their crinkled rubber flesh.
First published: Asimov's SF Magazine, 1989
Asimov's Readers' Choice Award, 1989
The ZONE #1 (1994), reprinted by permission of the author.
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