Fantasy: *characters* On Ship In Outer Space Poem by Margaret Alice

Sitting at my desk, translating a French text
indicating right amounts of pesticide to prevent
us dying suddenly - while the characters in my head

On a ship in outer space are collecting the charred
bodies after an exploded nuclear reactor while
feeling deepest sympathy with the maimed still alive

My protagonist, with hair as black as coal, falling
to her shoulders like a silky-soft waterfall, is in a
state of shock on seeing the devastation wrecked

By technology run amuck – she also knows how
much pesticide there already was in the bodies
of the dead – I suffer from emotional fatigue

With all this going on….