Where Seeds Will Never Grow

Is this, the desert, my victorious field?

My heart is heavy if it must be so.

I scan the vast horizon bleak and red

Beneath the anger of a swollen sun.

My friends and I, yes friends, as friends they were,

Lost paradise, for we our minds deceived

When thinking we could ever find it there

And build it in an image we thought fair.

Alas that vain minds trespass on the stars,

And search for legacy beyond all else,

We think us masters of both tide and time

But we know nought when all is said and done.

The greatest hope I have in writing this

Is that one day it might come to be found;

A lesson learned too late, on hostile ground.

Today I walked out from our homely camp,

The shuttle and a tent or two beside,

That we did build soon after we awoke

And left the ship in sleepy orbit high.

I ventured forth across the briny flats

For hidden water there I sometimes find.

A crust of pink salt cracked under my feet

It creaked and snapped and crunched until I heard

An echo in my mem’ry; hissing clicks

Of stasis pods and closing cargo doors.

The air was dry as ash and hot as coal

The wrong sun ever glowered overhead

And as the flick’ring line twixt land and sky

Loomed larger in my eye and in my mind

I staggered to a stop, fell to my knees;

The last explorer of this mission, I

Would tell the epic story of our fate.

There were three tasks yet waiting to be done:

To tap and carry water back to base

To lay my colleagues down to endless rest

To write my last farewell to this cruel life.

I write our memoir thus because I feel

That what we’ve strived for and our failures all

Can stand beside, in magnitude and grace,

Those epic tales and journeys once renowned.

It is a shame that in my pride I failed

To know the skill of minds that translate tales.

For me, all words were nothing but a tool.

I laughed at lit’rature; who writes of deeds

When making hist’ry is the nobler path?

Then I knew not the value of great words

That can preserve the mem’ries of our kind

And spark the flame that steers our ceaseless minds.

I think I’m mad, that’s why I write in verse.

It makes more sense to think it might be so.

My mind to beauteous numbers always held

And in their mast’ry I saw past our world

Beyond the moon, into the stars I gazed

‘Till there I found some others much like me.

Our academic minds were all aligned

And we together did solve problems great.

No distant world had ever been our goal

‘Cause we could not outlive the lengthy flight.

Why work and labour all those hours of life

If we would never live to see the day

When we set foot on perfect alien ground?

But my fair friends and I had found a way

To sleep, preserved for years without decay.

The time had come for humans to set forth,

To trace our path across the boundless skies,

And we chose planets likely to support

Our people; those who bravely stood the test.

They were our children, all of them did trust

In our grand plan, a promise drawn in dust. 

The government saw fit to fund our goal

And did believe they’d taken some control

Of our endeavours. But they never could

Predict the power of magnetic chance.

It steered imaginations nationwide

Until elections hinged on it’s success.

The world awaited our inaugural flight

With baited breath and hope for all mankind.

Three planets we did choose to colonise

Their atmospheres and distance from their suns

Suggested ideal ground to build upon.

They all were paradise to be regained

All heaven in our eyes and in our minds.

Three ships left Earth, our own and two besides

And there’s a chance the others found their home.

Still, cruel it feels that we should see this fate.

Of all the planets suitable for us

We missed the best, the greatest, by a mile

A single mile in all the cosmos wide

When on approach an unseen asteroid

Connected with our bow, enough to push

Our noble vessel wayward. Limping blind,

Her navigation systems compromised,

Her hull was damaged, and her cargo bled

Sad stasis pods, each with a life inside

Strewn wasted into space and left to die

So close to where we promised we would land

And build and till and plant and grow our seeds

Small lives made great on newly trodden ground.

But on our redrawn course we ventured on

Two hundred years, until this moon she found.

She deemed it fit for purpose at a pinch

A pinch it is. A pinch we shant survive.

Oh reader, think of us when we did wake

Expecting to see green and fertile ground

But there was only dust and salt to see.

It stretched beyond our eyes into our minds

And there it grew until our horror blind

Took hold and gripped us in our fragile hearts.

We slept so full and dreamed of life to come

Yet woke to death as certain as these words. 

Our hubris dealt a heavy blow indeed

And then we felt the blush of pride undone,

Not from the flush of blood all through our cheeks

But from the heat of that cruel, bloated sun.

It has an age that one, it laughs at me

For thinking I could ever leave this place.

I feel its radiation burn my skin

And cut me down before I can begin.

By now the two ships that set forth with ours  

Have built their colonies and thrown down roots

And with some luck their cargo has borne fruit.

But still, our ship was first to leave the Earth

And we were last to wake from cold repose.

So boldly do I stand on death’s far shore

And look back on our past through bitter tears

For I am human and I’m standing here,

And though mistakes were made, our tech held true.

Can I, the last explorer not stand proud?

Death rides his mighty steed the cosmos round.

I pause in what I write to lay to rest 

One of our crew, the youngest here by far.

She was an engineer, she knew her place

Was on the ship above, open to space.

For her the failure burned white hot within

Poor thing, her fam’ly may still rest above

If they weren’t lost to space with all the rest

Above the world that should have been our own

But no one said it. Bitter words hurt most

When there is nothing sweet to heal the wound.

Farewell Alessa, may you rest in peace

Your mind was ever fresh and true to them

Who slept above in sleepy orbit round

She was a beauty, gentle, fierce and kind

A mother, with a clear, accomplished mind.

This place of rest, on elevated ground

Looks out o’er salty flats, pink, glist’ning wide

And here, upon the ridge the hot wind lifts

My scant hair off burnt shoulders, firmly squared

To face the view, both beautiful and grand.

The sea is frozen in its ripples calm,

Like an old painting of imagined lands

Made real in red-stained daylight, burning blind.

Across it I can see my footprints shine,

Cracks in the salt that I did leave behind

Catch rays of light like silver shards of glass

That mark my lonely path, my last tired march.

At night the great gas giant slides into view

Its blue rings spread o’erhead in silv’ry hue

Obscuring stars and galaxies beyond

So now there’s two things left within my sight: 

By night, a cold impenetrable land

And in the day, an old and crippled sun.

A million years from now that sun will eat

This moon, our ship, and that great planet all

And we will truly pass beyond recall.

The second to lay down was a dear friend

A man of fifty years, or thereabouts

As botanist he thought he could persuade

Some seedlings to take root and transform still

This dust that was our earth but gave us not

The energy required to sustain life.

His tireless efforts with his seeds to sow

Were futile here, where seeds will never grow.

I well recall the day he sowed his last

He said “I never thought I’d wish for weeds

Or grass, nor die on ground devoid of green.”

Well, he might not have said it quite like that

But in my tale his dignity’s intact.

Poor Graham, may he find his fields of green

By some galactic wind as yet unseen.

The shuttle and the ship talk on and on

Like friends who once fought side-by-side and need

The comfort of a comrade close at hand

They share their news at a relentless pace

As though they see new sights and hear new sounds,

But their reports have been the same for years:

Red dust, scarce life, traces of fresh water.

Damaged hull, navigation systems down,

Twenty-seven percent of cargo lost.

Awaiting your command to send the rest.

They are as broken as their ragged crew

Without whom their long sentence they must serve

All hope lost to the emptiness of space

And all our ceaseless cries for help, unheard.

Excuse these mad, poetic words of mine

They show that cracks are running through my mind

Revealing what was missing all the time

A hot and shapeless, liquid metal core

That could fill gaps and warm my distant thoughts

And bring them back to Earth where they belonged. 

Instead I longed for this, I worked so hard

To leave all human cares far, far behind

And here is the reward that I did find

For all my work to benefit mankind.

Although, we know that that lie will not pass.

My work was mine, for me, and at long last

I cannot hide my truth, and I’m alone

And no one comes to carry my thoughts home.

The water here is cloudy and it stinks.

If living was my goal I’d drink it not

But as it is, it only buys me time

Enough to write these poor words, line by line.

It’s getting close to ev’ning now and I

Have brought my tablet to this patch of ground

Above the graves, I sit twixt death and heav’n 

And sketch my thoughts of life and love and all. 

The red light has slipped down and out of sight

And now the silv’ry rings fade into view

From purple depths that will solidify

Into the shape of that great planet wide.

It plunged us into winter once, and we

Sat huddled in our shelter, in the dark.

For months we could not leave that space confined

And slept as one, like babes wrapped side-by-side.

I look now at the body beside me

The last to lay to rest is hardest now.

The night before her end we sat and talked,

Her pale skin blistered red and burning still.

She spoke of home and family and all,

And darkly laughed at blind ambition cold

That led her to abandon all she loved

For fame and lofty immortality.

She had a vain and dark and noble soul

That pushed her to this limit beyond all.

I said she should be careful and take care

In case the sun burnt more than its fair share.

She looked at me, her pink face drawn and thin

And slowly, like a hurricane within

A gurgling croaking rasping sound began.

It took some time before I understood

The sound was laughter, and it echoes still

In that far place, where humour lingers not.  

It’s hard to drag her body into place

I push the grey dirt over her and wail

A sad and lonely cry to that dark night.

The beaut’ous light of those false stars above

Shine on indifferent as dust fragments fall

Sad trailing light, like tears into my dreams.

My arms ache and my lungs do struggle on

A labour that will end this night or next.

Until that time I’ll lay down in my grave

And cover what I can with silver dust.

I wonder who will read these words of mine

I wonder if they’ll think of what we did

As tragic loss, or justice for my kind.

The pioneers of our flawed species we

Are ever lost to dark eternity.

I am not qualified to write our end.

I was not qualified to start this tale.