Seven years ago, a few sols apart, two shooting stars,
Bright as falling angels, pierced an alien cinnamon-hued night,
Dropping onto Barsoom robot Lewis and Clarks
Which have now spent more time ‘alive’ on Mars
Than on Earth and have shown us more of Ares
Than even Bradbury dared to dream:
The Columbia Hills, conquered, glowing gold
In the mid-day marmalade light;
Meteorites glinting in the distance
On the very edge of sight;
Rocks the shape of sharks’ teeth,
Fossilised brains and bears; layers
Of ancient stone piled storeys-high
Beneath a crater’s crumbling edge;
Dust as dark as powdered coal blown
Into folds and waves; a midnight sky ablaze
With stars after another ‘longest drive’ day –
And Earth, the distant Homeworld, reduced
To a sapphire sequin that fades, fades, fades…
Strange and humbling to think
The far future Mars will be a true New World,
A world just as wonderful as ours,
With its own poets and pilgrims, generals
And gentlemen; navies will clash on its terraformed
Seas while screaming armies swarm over Olympus’ heights;
Tortured songwriters will sit on obsidian roofs,
Kicking at martian moss and staring into a twin moon sky;
And lovers will stand on a canyon’s crumbling edge
At dawn, yawning, watching the ice blue Sun rise
Through the Marineris mists and ‘kiss’
Through their visors’ dust-etched glass…
As the aeons pass Mars will have
A million Emperors and kings; a hundred thousand
Bloody wars will be fought over great
And little things; nations will rise and heroes
Will fall, Terra’s Tale told all over again.
But as long as a single heart beats on Barsoom
No-one will ever forget the names
“Spirit” and “Opportunity”.
Wild-haired Cydonian composers will pen
Soul-stirring symphonies inspired by them.
Families will follow their legendary routes
Across the lonely deserts of Mars;
Walk in their vanished-long-ago tracks;
Pose for pictures beside Wopmay; edge slowly
Down into Duck Bay to touch Cape Verde’s
Vandalised Stone, perhaps scratching into it
Graffiti of their own…
But for now they are ours,
They belong to us – the rover-hugging horde,
The fans whose hands dance over the keyboards
Of computers in bedrooms and dens, offices
And schools, around the world, waiting
Breathlessly for the next download of raws, all
Hopelessly in love with the rust- and ochre-painted
World that is the rovers’strawberry-sanded wonderland.
© Stuart Atkinson 2010
For a colour poster version of this poem, created by my great friend Glen Nagle, go here: http://astro0.wordpress.com/mer7
