The Backward Look

As once in heaven Dante looked back down

From happiness and highest certainty

To see afar the little threshing floor

That makes us be so fierce, so we look now

And with what difference from this stony place,

Our sterile satellite with nothing to do,

Not even water in the so-called seas.

No matter the miracles that brought us here,

Consider the end. Even the immense power

Of being bored we brought with us from home

As we brought all things else, even the golf

Balls and the air. What are we doing here,

Foreshadowing the first motels in space?

"They found a desert and they left the Flag".

From earth we prayed to heaven; being now

In heaven, we reverse the former prayer:

Earth of the cemeteries and cloudy seas,

Our small blue agate in the big black bag,

Earth mother of us, where we make our death,

Earth that the old man knocked on with his staff

Beseeching, "Leve moder, let me in,"

Hold us your voyagers safe in the hand

Of mathematics, grant us safe return

To where the food is, and the fertile dung,

To generation, death, decay; to war,

Gossip and beer, and bed whether warm or cold,

As from the heaven of technology

We take our dust and rocks and start back down.