Here, memory is something we've handed over to machines. The poem opens like a hymn, but the thing being praised is "the byte," a tiny unit of data that saves us by being "short and interchangeably present." One byte can stand in for any other, and that sameness is both the comfort and the cost.
The middle lines turn darker. Power becomes "a plain skull nobody faces," and stored information is imagined as "a charnel house of abstract accounts," a place piled with the remains of records rather than living recollection. The speaker seems wary, even unsettled, as if our digital archives are a kind of burial ground we avoid looking at.
The ending shifts again. Digging "under the dirt," we find "a gracious feast." The mood stays eerie, but it carries an odd generosity: beneath the death imagery, something nourishing waits to be uncovered. The poem leaves us caught between awe and unease.