COMPUTER IN THE TRASH Poem by António Manuel Pires Cabral

Here lies a computer
in the trash. And yet
its tin brain contained memory
- gigabytes of it! -, performed
the four mathematical operations
and accepted verses
on its immaculate
virtual whiteness.

Now it can no longer add
or subtract,
nor groan out poems, nor underline
misspelled words.
The droplets of solder, precarious
metal neurons,
have lost their memory.

Tell me, brother,
since you got there first,
what it's like not to function.

And if the rust is painful.