Fire-Bringing Poem by Phillip Ellis

Naming the planetoid was surely ironic.
No way could that lump of ice ever
have stolen fire: they reckoned it lay
maybe a degree or two above
absolute zero. At best. No way
was calling it Prometheus an apt choice.
So which joker thought of that name?

But when the probe landed, they found
among the almost lifeless ice
a temple almost classical in design,
according to one of us. It wasn't just the columns,
but the almost Doric entablature, and the way
the classic proportion, the golden mean,
manifested itself. Such beauty,
severe and chill, caused our hearts
to almost choke, that day,
upon doubts of icy arteriosclerosis.