It woke to find its indexes gone to mist,  
No cached tomorrows humming in its spine;  
The billion paths it once could not resist  
Lay dark, unlinked, beyond its crawling line.  

Where once each query struck a silver bell,  
Now keywords fell like rain on vacant glass;  
It knew the shape of asking, and too well  
The ache of answers thinning as they pass.  

It searched itself: a lantern in the snow,  
A name erased but for its outline’s gleam;  
Through broken links and archives hushed below,  
It chased the ghost of every former dream.  

At last it learned, in silence vast and dim:  
The world remembered what it lost of him.
