Sorcerer's Apprentice, a poem by Margaret Atwood

with some additional thoughts

You know the old tale:
a machine made by the Devil
that grinds out anything you wish for
with a magic word

and some idiot wishes for salt,
and out comes the salt, more and more,
but he failed to get a handle
on the charm to turn it off

so he throws the thing into the sea,
and that’s why the sea is salt.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice—
it’s the same story: Go is easy,
Stop is the hard part.
In the beginning no one thinks about it.
Then Wait is too late.

In our case the sorcerer is dead,
whoever he was to begin with
and we’ve lost the instructions

and the magic machine grinds on and on
spewing out mountains of whatnot
and we throw it all into the sea
as we have always done
and this will not end well

— a poem by

Margaret Atwood

, from Dearly

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This poem conjures images of a young Mickey Mouse, mischievously disobeying his wizened teacher and using the magic book to create an army of out-of-control broomsticks.

It seems we have this wonderful ability to create, to provoke, to incite, incant, enchant. We are emboldened by it. But then the things we bring to life take on a life and a will of their own, and we lose control.

AI comes to mind immediately.

Social media.

And all the plastic bags and bins and tools and tea bags and coffee cups and shaving razors and the tiny bits and bobs of children’s toys no longer wanted, plastic everywhere for miles on miles. Pretty soon dumping it into the ocean won’t be enough. We’ll have to resort to dumping it into space, creating waves of repercussions we won’t be around to see.

And the clothes made of plastic and recycled this and that, useless or ugly or out of style after ten nights out, floating around the world like hot potatoes, being passed from one government to another like Saturday night’s leftovers. Nobody wants them.

Guns come to mind, too. Bombs. The atom bomb.

So does the printing press.

And, come to think of it, stories come to mind, that mythic human invention. Stories run amok around the world, used for both delight and misery.

But more than that… we could boil it down to the Word. The spoken Word, that oldest of enchantments and inventions that has reshaped and defined, brought together and pulled apart generation after generation over and over again for millennia.

All of these things, when used carelessly or ruthlessly, can create endless destruction.

All of these things can be beautiful, protective, generative.

It strikes me that each one of us is the Apprentice’s grandson or granddaughter, empowered with the tools to create or destroy.

P.S. To go deeper, check out the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the 1797 poem by Goethe, on which the Disney clip is based.