Ex Bellis Scientia
non est ad astra mollis e terris via
-Seneca the Younger
If Sputnik hadn’t been made from a missile
casing, would we have reached the moon?
22 days of a terrible beep, beep
while worried men in shirtsleeves smoked
filterless cigarettes and looked up
in fear instead of wonder. Cold war
old as when Aeneas taunted Turnus
to wing his way to the stars or hide
underground, deep as secret silos
stacked with death.
So we raced up into the black, but
not so far that we couldn’t look down,
eyes wide as the oceans below
tugged into tides by a gray marble
once worshiped as a goddess,
vessel for the first footprint ad astra.
But science, no matter how many countless
teeming stars shine as beacons on distant shores,
fails to ignite our restless souls.
Instead, we cringe and wait for the red god,
the next great war, to goad us farther
than an empty base in a Sea of Tranquility.
Tags: Poetry
“22 days of a terrible beep, beep
while worried men in shirtsleeves smoked
filterless cigarettes and looked up
in fear instead of wonder.”
I love the strength of the image I got when I read those lines – there’s a definite feeling being transmitted here – superb!
I really like this poem, especially the last three stanzas.
love the history in this –
These lines were especially poetic for me:
So we raced up into the black, but
not so far that we couldn’t look down,
eyes wide as the oceans below
tugged into tides by a gray marble
My thoughts echo Sheila’s above. These lines reached out to me. Great sharing here
A great deal of truth in the last three stanzas. Excellent write.
Anna
]
Thanks for the comments, folks. Heard a talk about space travel and it got me thinking, so I thought maybe I could pass on the itch!
Really enjoyed the topic and flow of this although I found myself -when reading it outloud -that I heard some of the linebreaks differently