dedicated to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
How many times has his glass
of tea grown cold, as, irresistibly,
vistas unfold, seizing imagination
by the reins, drawing the mundane
in its wake to veer off well-worn carriage-
ways - a speeding troika, horses steaming,
winds of change whipping their manes, snow
streaming behind churning hooves, billowing
like rocket-trails, as he stands transfixed,
mind ablaze - a comet in the Milky Way -
beside the fireplace where the day's
last embers pale from red to grey.
How many times has he rocked
the cradle where conditioned
thinking lies, jolting it to wake
the sleeping adolescent earthbound
child, to whisper interplanetary
lullabies of odyssies: "… the Moon, my
little ones, then Mars… Arise, arise…
it is the morning of our cosmic enterprise…"
Frost claims his family, one by one.
Outside, a wolf howls to the skies;
the river, paralysed to ice, and isolation
chill the bones, while visions of what is
to come explode in one man's cranium,
and stellar nurseries, nebulae, replace
the cradle he's outgrown.