Voyager

Grady McMurtry

6 August 1943

Out of the star enshrouded night it fell,

A battered derelict that space had maimed,

Its hull a twisted wreck, its power tamed,

And of its crew no living soul to tell.

Space dry and thin the rigid mummy sits

And marks a vigil only death may keep;

What endless night, what weary age of sleep

Has he kept sentinel? No lip admits.

That was a golden age, that world carefree

When men stood foursquare on the crust of Urth

And threw their challenge to the stars; with mirth

They swore to conquer all infinity.

So armed with courage knowledge would deny

Their fragile bulbs of steel wire launched to float

Across the shallow solar gulfs, where bloat

Strange moons and planets in a crowded sky.

And then with knowledge astronautic gained,

With fire atomic as a willing slave,

Upon the silent God of Night they gave

An offering of ships, and men ordained.

Of men imbued with zeal the mystics know

Who manned those mighty ether ships that fell

Like pebbles dropping down an endless well

Until they came to alien suns where glow

The incandescent vapors multihued,

Where toxic gasses burn with tourquoise light

Or smash the space-time contin’um with white

Heat from a hellish dwarf, where planets brood

Like peering eyes that stare upon the doomed;

And from those new worlds of the starlit seas,

From island nebulae, from galaxies,

From burned-out suns whose glory once illumed

Weird destinies. Here cosmic engineers

Set colonies along their orbit runs

Till navies filled with commerce of the suns

Bore fruit of conquest, for those pioneers

On the high sea of interstellar space

By trellised lace of orbit lines, and force

That binds each star and planet to its course

Had welded fast their empire. But the race

Of humankind had changed as aeons passed.

No longer was the man of Urth supreme,

But cosmopolitan, had lost his dream,

And though he stood where wealth of knowledge massed

Had thrown his outposts to the chasmed lip

That marks the lightless, ultimate abyss

Beyond which shore no beacon sun may hiss

Or sibilate in silence, yet the whip

Of manly strength that was his heritage

Sank deep and fallow, while his gnarled machines

Were given to the task, and thoughtless means

Of mindless android monsters who for gage

To measure used no human eye that scans

But walked in darkness shadowed by the length

Of instruments prehensile to strength

Of electronic solenoids, where spans

The rippled muscles of a force that spoke

The unleashed power of atomic might

Stripped from the glowing nucleus, where bright

And hot the whiplashed positrons are broke

Against bedrock neutronium, but soft,

Effeminate and poised the progeny

Of space tanned mariners where dark debris

Who bloated on the ebb tide, for aloft

The tentacles that spread to integrate

With calculus logistical the plan

That was to be the Monument to Man;

A universe of virile peace, a state

Omnipotent of matter, held decay

And back the tide rolled, back across the years

Of light and peace, back down the trail of tears,

For empire is not won within a day

But must be purchased by the blood of those

Who dream the Greater Dream, and who would die

While searching in the archives of the sky

For knowledge that was placed beneath the Rose

So long ago, back to its place of birth

It slowly ebbed, and then along the sands

Of outpost planets it has washed, rough hands

Colonial were set against the Urth

And Chaos ruled. So came the Tongueless One

To walk the empty spaceways, and to grin

With his huge imbecility, at men

Beat down into dust and, beaten, shun

Their heritage. And now from Urth is seen,

When with a slow, majestic sweep begun

Each eventide at setting of the sun,

The Wheel of Stars parading down the screen

Zodiacal, the constellations lost,

The solar systems, fertile worlds, and rocks,

The frigid planets, and the flame swept locks

Of guardian keeps on Mercury. The cost

Was paid in treasuries of energy

Extraneous, and toil and sweat and thought

Of terrene life to barren planets brought,

Ten billion New Worlds in immensity.

And now the old Urth, like a jeweled hag,

Her gemmed cities bright against the breast

Of umbrial shadows draped across the West

From shoulders of the senile hills that sag

With weariness that ages slow erode,

Has gathered her ephemerae to dwell

In cities sealed and domed with crystal shell,

Here sits the Elder Brethern, here they bode

In vaulted halls to weigh the Cosmic Plan

By symboled logos, and as worlds set free

Launch each a space-borne fleet to destiny,

They comprehend the All; this was our Pan!

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