Prayer to the Rebbe
A short, unsettling prayer that brings together religious faith, climate anxiety and the rise of artificial intelligence. Addressing the Rebbe, the poem wonders whether humanity is surrendering its future to machines—and what remains when the systems watching over us finally fail.
Oh Rebbe, I pray to you
in the year of the fire horse,
as if humanity is hurtling
towards Hades itself.
Forty degrees in the shade,
I debate whether your words
and deeds ever reached
more than a chosen few.
Now centuries later,
machines take over—
appointed above us
as our keepers.
Factual. Clinical.
Brutal.
Recording everything
to left and right.
But what happens
if the satellites fail?
If the lights of heaven go dark
in a universe without end?
And the congregation says:
“Let it be so.”
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