Starman Poem by David Lewis Paget

From the whirling clouds of matter swirled
From some dark distant place,
Far beyond the distant vistas that
The Hubble's lens could trace,
There approached a battered vessel like
The long lost Holy Grail,
With a magno-drive, half crippled, as
It landed on its tail.

With the crusted metal glowing with
The detritus of space,
And an inner hum, a grinding like
A flywheel out of place,
There was seen to be an opening,
A long descending lip,
And a man with moons and crescents
On his helmet, left the ship.

And the suit he wore was silver of
No texture known to man,
With a symbol on his shoulder like
The god we knew as Pan,
While an aura formed around him
Like the stars within the skies,
They were whirling in confusion,
Were reflected in his eyes!

And there followed in his train a host
Of men with angels wings,
But they shimmered like the mist of
A mirage, the desert brings,
And the sound they made was painful like
The music of the spheres,
It made soldiers dropp their weapons,
Fall to earth, and hold their ears.

Then he strode on out amongst them like
A giant in the land,
And he seemed to grow in stature as
He opened up his hand,
Where a tiny whirling cosmos whirled
Elliptic in reverse,
Like a model of the galaxy,
Our own small universe!

He looked up at the sky where all
The clouds had turned to gold,
With the flash of distant lightning that
Some prophet had foretold,
And the thunder rumbled eerily
Across the planet's face,
As the angels rose about him in
Some panoramic grace.

He removed his gilded helmet, and
He then began to speak,
His voice like some dread avatar
That men had feared to seek,
His words were faintly chilling as
The sun sank in the west,
'I see that you have multiplied
Inside my treasure chest! '

'When last I came among you
There were fields and mountain streams,
There were mighty oaks and redwoods,
Sweeping vistas made of dreams,
And the skies were blue, unclouded,
And the air you breathed was pure,
But I sense some foul corruption has
Crept inward from the shore! '

'For your seas are now polluted with
Your fæces and your greed,
I left fish and healthy species, for
Your food, and for your need,
But you hunted to extinction,
Now the buffalo is rare,
And the ice is slowly melting
Underneath each Polar Bear.'

'So we'll take your finest women
As we did in Moses day,
When we came down from the heavens
To improve your DNA,
And we'll leave you to your folly,
To the wages of your greed,
While we choose another planet
And implant another seed.'

Then the wind, it came in scurries
And it whirled about his knees,
The pollution from the gasworks, from
The belching factories,
And it covered all the angels in
Corrosion from its rust,
And the angels dissipated
With its acid, turned to dust!

Then it swept into his face and made
His Holy features burn,
As it made his eyes to water and
It choked him as he turned,
And he tried to make it back toward
The ship that lay in wait,
But his skin began to fester,
And his head began to ache.

Now he's breathing in a bubble, fed
With oxy through a line,
And his skull has been uncovered
Much as if he'd washed in lime,
And his ship has been dismantled,
Melted down and turned to cans,
Filled and labeled 'Holy Water'
For his few remaining fans!

30 November 2009