To Sail Beyond the Sun
(A Luminous Collage)
We all are solar sails
in the tree of heaven climbing free
And yet in looking back I see
From topmost part of farthest tree
A land as bright, beloved, and blue
As any Yeats found to be true
home-planet Earth
As bright as all the summer air
And in the solar-system’s body, where
I circumnavigate each cell in you
Your merest molecule is right and true
Your moons and planets passing fair
And so we earn what we shall dare
Tossed from the central sun
We with our own concentric fires
Blaze and burn.
Burn and blaze, Until we feel
Once at the hub of wakening
the vast starwheel
Of solar system’s body
A Pegasus of cometary hair
tended by
comet grooms like Kepler and
Galileo Galilee
Whose short-sight probing light-years
saw the way for solar sails to go
To change tomorrow’s clime, its meteor snows.
Our rocket selfhood grows
and, rocket-less, more elegantly knows
And claim from Heaven
The Garden we were shunted from,
For now, space-driven
We fit, fix, force and fuse,
Re-hub the system vast
On wings of sunlight, travel fast,
on vector axle, over vacuum’s floor
Respoke starwheel
And at the spiraled core
Plant foot, full fire-shod
and stride the stride of God
whose name is spelled in stars,
and in whose name
We clothe ourselves in flame
Why do we, the solar sails,
fragile as a feather’s frond,
silently seek to sail so far?
We walk the air from here to planet out beyond
Because we’re more than fond of life and what we are.
We are the energy of Shakespeare’s verse,
we are what mathematics wants to be—
The Life Force in the Universe
That longs to See!
That would Become
and give a voice to matter that was dumb.
We are, to the gates of gravity, the keys
We are the Abyss Light that comes from Pleiades
We are the melody of futures flying soon
And what the song, the tune?
To fashion fires and thus outrace the Moon
West is West, and East is East,
but we sail on perpendiculars
To grow man ten ways tall to feast
On Universe and stars
And why did Engineering bend
the force of light to give us play?
To landfall Time, give man Forever’s Day
And free us from well-bottom’s cave
Unlock the doors of light-year grave
Fling wide the portal;
Give man the gift of stars
And so, as solar sail, while children sleep
in atmospheric blanket curled
I bury all the stars in Cosmic Deep
So, listen, world . . .
Is this the setting of the sun of Earth?
No, this is what the future brings:
A million-dozen multitudes of summer things!
O child, they said, avert your eyes.
What does a solar sailor feel?
Avert my eyes? I said, what, from wild skies
Where stars appear and wheel.
And so a sail takes flight
beyond the airy skirts of old Earth-mother
And fills my heart and make me feel as if I might
This night and then another and another
Live forever and not die.
This is life itself, to onward fly
A boy alone with Universe
who knows that he must go into the dark.
God minds me to be so. He put the bright sparks in my blood
and taught me to run,
and run again after I fall
Small sparks, large sun—
All one, it is the same.
Large flame or small
as long as my heart is young
the flavor of the night lies on my tongue . . .
The Universe is thronged with fire and light,
And we but smaller suns which, skinned, trapped and kept
where we have dreamed, and laughed, and wept
Enshrined in blood and precious bones,
with heartbeat’s rhythms, passion’s tones
Hold back the night
Somewhere a band is playing
Where the moon never sets in the sky
And the sun sets never
And Time . . . goes on forever
And hearts then continue to beat
to the pulse of the future coming
To the sound of the old moon-drum drumming
And the glide of Eternity’s feet
Infinity my destination,
until my course is run,
Light hierarchies of Time and, one by one,
With mighty Ra, fall in that final sun
Billions of years ago, Big Bang began the flight
of galaxy from galaxy that was to be
A thousand tigers’ eyes fireworked the night
Quadrillions of years hence,
the suns burnt out, we solar sails still drift
Gone blind from stars and dark of moon
thinned by evaporation from our metal flesh
And saw in X-ray warp and mesh
A sigh of polar-region breath
At first there was but sea and tides by night
fingerboard space with silver starlight frets
and souls’ pure jets.
At first, we dandelion sails were still as death
At first there was no captain to the ship
But: God obtruded, rose and blew his breath
and we went spinning outward from His lip
Sailed . . . through wild dreams
In free-fall fell
God, Nature, Space, all Time, now stand aside we said
Illumine Heaven and relight the coals of Hell
Past Uranus we sailed, that tilted planet saw
And knocked the world half off its axis into awe
What size is Space? A thimble!
No! outside of a sun!
pocked by sun-spots in which gods
could bathe themselves in ion streams
and sleep in plasma magnet dreams . . .
What is this dream of Cosmos
Born from a senseless yearning
Of molecules for form,
Birthed from a mindless burning
Of solar fire-storm—
The Universe, in Needing,
Made flesh of empty space,
And with a mighty seeding
Made pygmy human race . . .
Which now on fires striding
the solar sails to give
on solar lightbeams riding
Wakes up the stars to live
Then off they glide on rafters
of centripetal force
with sails as light as laughters
Of stars like skating ponds.
The ice between the stars
is gravity’s weak bonds
Twin mirror selves of seeing,
each soul to soul responds.
We dance, and spin, and play
We live Forever’s Day
And spawn the Cosmic rivers,
in billions celebrate
with out-from-sunward spinning
No Ending or beginning
Behold! The Mystery stirring . . .
Here in space our dreams are truly ours
Here they lie—in countries where the spacemen
Flow in fire and much desire the Moon
And reach for Mars
on thin metallic wing
And teach the fiery atoms how to sing
Mind’s quest makes footfall here
leaving cradle Earth behind
To transfer across Space to lift Mankind
beyond the reach of ancient fear
The thought that birthed itself to Space
is the thought that knows it knows it knows
Across the solar system’s face
Where now Man goes
Grand Things to Come? Yes! Things to Come!
Starlings, eagles, falcons, larks
we sing from throats no longer dumb
and spread our wings, and soar in arcs
Of wheeling orbs and sparks
From graveyard dirt he shapes a striding man
To jig the stars and go where none else can.
What pulls him there in arrow flight of ships?
A birth of suns that burn from Shakespeare’s flaming lips
From Stratford’s fortress mind we build and go
And strutwork catwalk stars across abyss
The Universe itself is our stage
and our script reads something close to this:
Stand here, grow tall, rehearse
and then surpass the plan.
Be God-grown-Man.
Act out the Universe!
Across the waters of galactic Babylon
We sail, we solar sails, and sing of Zion.
Our golden song goes on and on
The sun whose light we sail upon:
A blazing summer dandelion.
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What can I say? We can follow this dream, and so many others like it, if we only lift our heads and go!