The Poetry Thread

[Suzy]

Space Burial Eulogy

To be read out for someone who is to be buried in space (it will happen, eventually…! ).
Completed: 2002

Far above this Earthly domain
We are gathered here in place
To commit the mortal remains
Of our brother/sister [name] to space.

In that world beyond ours
May he/she forever know peace
As we return his/her body
To the eternal deep.

From the stars we were formed
In the depths of time
And to the stars we return
At the end of our lives.

We wish our brother/sister farewell
As into eternity he/she embarks
May the Universe embrace him/her
In its welcoming darkness.

Optional extra -:
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
In [God’s/Allah’s/the Goddess’s/etc.] mercy do we trust.​

-----Post Added-----


World’s End

A gloomy time travel poem
Completed: 1 March 2000

Here I stand alone
At the end of time
On a world blasted
By nuclear fire.

I have come on a journey
Of five billion years
To an Earth where humans
Are but a memory held dear.

Above me looms the sun
Now a blood-red giant
This ancient star
Is near the end of its life.

A crimson Moon hangs
In the night-dark sky;
Glaring at me
Like a baleful eye.

Only a chill wind stirs
To break the silence;
No life remains here
To witness Earth’s dying.

My race journeyed the stars
But extinction found us, it seems;
My world has become
A graveyard of dreams.

Here, I am the last human
Left on Earth alive
I hasten towards my timeship
To return home amongst my kind.
​

(My poetry page)

 

[SiberianTiger]

Ok, I think it's relevant here too. This thread is worthy of being revived...

http://orbiter-forum.com/showpost.php?p=105944&postcount=58

Translation of Maximillian Voloshin's sonnets from 'Lunaria' sequence (1913)

               9                                            Sonnet IX

И сладостен и жутко безотраден                The mindless sleep of gaping valleys
Безумный сон зияющих долин.                   Is so delicious and so dreary all the while,
Я был на дне базальтовых теснин.              I stood at bottoms of basaltic narrows,
В провал небес (о, как он ёмко-жаден!)        And watched a shower of starry grapes acsending

Срывался ливень звёздных виноградин,          Into the hungry gap of heaven's abyss.
И солнца диск, вступая в свой притин,         The face of Sun, acceding its throne house,
Был над столпами пламенных вершин,            Walked over pillars of fire-stricken peaks,
Крылатый и расплёсканный - громаден.          It was so huge, so spilt aside and winged.

Ни сумрака, ни воздуха, ни вод -              There is no twilight, and no water and no air -
Лишь острый блеск гранитов, сланцев, шпатов.  Just dazzling glare of granites, slates and feldspars.
Ни шлейфы зорь, ни веера закатов              And never this black sky turns pink

Не озаряют чёрный небосвод, -                 At times of dawns or when sunset spreads out.
Неистово порывист и нескладен                 One only ever sees your harsh and ragged
Алмазный бред морщин твоих и впадин.          Deliruim of diamond wrinkles and creases.

               10                                           Sonnet X
               
Алмазный бред морщин твоих и впадин           Deliruim of diamond wrinkles and creases
Томит и жжёт. Неумолимо жёстк                 Is like a burning torment. Inexorably crisp
Рисунок скал, базальтов черный лоск,          Is the sky line of rocks and basalts' shiny gloss,
Строенье арок, стрелок, перекладин.           The shape of arcs, lancet embrasures and vaults. 

Вязь рудных жил, как ленты пёстрых гадин,     This script of ore veins coiled mottled snakes alike,
Наплывы лавы бурые, как воск,                 The bumps of lava looking brownish wax,
И даль равнин, как обнажённый мозг...         And vast expanse of plains like stripped crust of brain...
Трехдневный полдень твой кошмарно-страден     All suffers crushing heat at noon that lasts three days.

Пузырчатые осыпи огня                         Hillslides of flaming bubbles
Сверкают в нимбе яростного дня,               Give out sparks in halo of the day,
А по ночам над кратером Гиппарха              And when night falls, high up over the Hipparchus

Бдит <Volva> - неподвижная звезда,            The 'Volva' shines, the unmoving luminary
И отливает пепельно-неярко                    Its light is casted back as ghostly ashy gleam
Твоих морей блестящая слюда.                  When it comes down upon your seas of daze.

               11                                           Sonnet XI
               
Твоих морей блестящая слюда                   When light comes down upon your seas of daze,
Хранит следы борьбы и исступлений,            Past rage and passions emerge, formerly kept secret,
Застывших мук, безумных дерзновений,          The frozen torture and insane adventures,
Двойные знаки пламени и льда.                 The signs of past, the double signs of flame and ice.

Здесь рухнул смерч вселенских <Нет> и <Да>.   The cosmic swirl of fighting 'Yes' and 'No' once hit
От моря Бурь до Озера Видений,                These desolated plains from Sea of Storms and to the Lake of Visions,
От призрачных полярных взгромождений,         From ghostly peaks that tower at the poles 
Не видевших заката никогда,                   Which do not know that Sun can ever set,

До темных цирков Mare Tenebrarum -            And to the darkest craters of the Mare Tenebrarum,
Ты вся порыв, застывший в гневе яром.         You are untamed, you are wrath driven stiffened spirit.
И страшный шрам на кряже Лунных Альп          Behold, the awful circling scar of Lunar Alps

Оставила небесная секира.                     Was left by heaven's battle axe which fell once here.
Ты, как Земля, с которой сорван скальп, -     You are the picture of an Earth scalped bare,
Лик Ужаса в бесстрастности эфира!             The face of horror in the passionless ether!

Does anybody know how to preserve spacing without this silly [ CODE ] tag? Or at least, make the code window not to have the same width every time?

 

[natey787]

Space Poetry

I had an literature assignment to write a poem about heroes. So I wrote about the Mission Controllers of Apollo 13.

The Hidden Heroes:
The Mission Controllers of Apollo Thirteen


They were not quite as famous
As those whom they defended
They did not venture to the moon
But stayed behind, to ensure the safe passage
Of the star sailors, to their goal and then back
The big room in Houston was filled with smoke, data
A plethora of engineers
These were the heroes of Apollo
Clad not in white pressure suits and bubble helmets
But in shirts, ties, and thick-framed glasses
Flickering, now-aged tube screens
Gave them all they needed to know
Each one with a job, a duty for the mission
SYSTEMS, SURGEON, GUIDANCE, CAPCOM
And the Flight Director, the real commander of the ship
Which would sail to the Moon and back
Safely, God-willing
The jobs of the controllers were always important
But their abilities were tried most
When the projected screens above them showed an error
Crackly radio voice came back to them, reporting a problem
An oxygen tank, holding the propellants to return them to Earth
Had failed, a trail of gas followed the stricken craft
As it drifted through the immediate cosmos
Mission control was a flurry of activity
The engineers strived to return home the astronauts
Kept awake by coffee, cigarettes
No time for much else
Constantly running sims on trajectories
Calculating by hand the amount of air to breathe
Not enough
On-site ingenuity would solve this crisis
And countless others
They guided the spaceship and the crew
Around our Moon
And straight back home
After days of constant struggle, fear
There was reentry
The capsule enveloped in fire as it plummeted home
The radio was out, for all that plasma
The only relief came when the three
Billowing orange parachutes made themselves evident
Against the blue sky and ocean
Emotion ran high in that room in Houston as the pictures came back
Of the three men who were being picked up
Whose lives they’d saved.
The hidden heroes cheered for their victory over failure
The hidden heroes of the Mission Control.


Anyone else have any space poetry they'd like to share?

 

[V8Li]

I never thought I'll say this but here it is, my first poem
It's called "Alone with my stars" and is about what I feel right now:

I never felt love, not once in my life
And so I decided to reach for my stars
Alone, on my own, looking for what
I alwyas thought I wanted so bad.

And so for millions of miles
On my own I crwaled
Only to find that all I just want
Is to go back to what I've once loved

The last 3 lines are ok but need some work, maybe add an ending.
:speakcool:

---------- Post added at 02:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 PM ----------

It just keeps coming, I can't stop it
I was thinking about replacing the last line with

Is to find again what once I've loved

 

[SiberianTiger]

Need help interpreting Yeats' verse

Dear poetry lovers,

My friend asked me to translate this piece of poetry of William Butler Yeats:

WHY should not old men be mad?


Some have known a likely lad

That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist

Turn to a drunken journalist;

A girl that knew all Dante once

Live to bear children to a dunce;

A Helen of social welfare dream,

Climb on a wagonette to scream.


Some think it a matter of course that chance

Should starve good men and bad advance,

That if their neighbours figured plain,

As though upon a lighted screen,

No single story would they find

Of an unbroken happy mind,

A finish worthy of the start.


Young men know nothing of this sort,

Observant old men know it well;

And when they know what old books tell

And that no better can be had,

Know why an old man should be mad.

I am still not sure I correctly understand a meaning of the following phrase in this verse:

"that no better can be had"

Can you rephrase it for me using some more common language, please?

 

[Codz]

Dear poetry lovers,

My friend asked me to translate this piece of poetry of William Butler Yeats:



I am still not sure I correctly understand a meaning of the following phrase in this verse:

"that no better can be had"

Can you rephrase it for me using some more common language, please?

It can't get any better?

 

[SiberianTiger]

It can't get any better?

If that is so, then does the verb "Know" in the next line sound like an incentive to the listener, like "You do know, that..."?

 

[iamwearingpants]

I've already posted this in the random comments thread, but I think it needs a proper home.

A distant time from far away
Has waited strong to catch today
For eons long it snaked avast
It's moment here has come at last

There's a man upon the tip of a
magnificent white standing spear
He's shaking uncontrollably but
inside grinning ear to ear

Reaching to the yonder blue he sees
as he is destined to
The lands below he used to know
are throw away as feelings flow

An infinitesimal point of light
Is much too far and much too bright
Nowhere near are other men
He's reached the stars yet again​

 

[Moach]

it's not an orbiter-forum poetry thread until someone quotes from the great master Douglas Adams....


an excerpt from the third worse poetry in the universe

Oh flundered gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee
That mordiously hath bitled out
Its earted jurtles
Into a rancid festering [drowned out by moaning and screaming]
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts
And living glupules frart and slipulate
Like jowling meated liverslime
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon
See if I don't.

sorry, couldn't resist

 

[hedzup456]

Click the link in the signature-its where I post all of my poetry, and share some of others'. Enjoy!
~Hedz
P.S. Sorry for the lack of space poems, I'm working on a big one..
P.P.S I know the blog is new, but I like it.