Unearthly Dreamings

Meadows of the Motherland,
your farmer’s ashes sown
by fallen stars,
bear mankind another strand
of unearthly dreamings grown
from earthly scars.

“Killers all!” he cried,
flames clawing at his throat
through melted fore.
Hands jut from stygian tide
upon the ferryman’s boat,
dashed on the shore.

Shrieks of the atmosphere
deafened the engineer,
vessel now commandeered
by twisted chute.
Thoughts to his warnings spurned,
promised a safe return,
Brezhnev’s plan unconcerned
by wild fears
voiced by a mute.

Call
to grieving wife,
family left below.
Government strife:
father in
thrall.
His daughter’s grin
while playing in the snow.

Solar panels
undeployed.
Radio channels,
lost in void.
Foretold to fail,
rode on a stallion pale.

Orbit 19,
ordered home.
Blue and the green,
roads to Rome.
Orientation
from the sun,
ion propulsion
manually run.

Halt
the second launch,
thunder from the squall.
Future blood staunched,
rain’s blessed
fault:
three crewmen spared
their companion’s fall.

The calm of space.

Aurora Borealis,
fire of spirits passed,
to cleanse of human malice
man’s rise into the vast.

Burn, burn the ties that bind
mortals to this terrene rind.
Yearn, yearn to part the skies,
upon an ark of sullen eyes.

He cursed the dust
that bore him
-- screaming --
bastard child abandoned to the clouds.

“Compost for the Kremlin Wall,
fed to blooms on Lenin’s grave...
Marvel as we heroes crawl
to our deaths so brave!”
said Yuri to solemn friend.
“Soyuz will be a martyr’s end.”
“You cannot die in my stead,”
he replied. “You bring the Moon.”
He turned, hiding tears he’d shed,
and walked to his tomb.
Gagarin unsheathed his cross,
and prayed to sway a brother’s loss.

This too shall pass.

In bygone meadows of the Motherland
a laborer boy studies planes gone by.
The unearthly dreamings of a farmhand
to pluck the planets from a fertile sky.