The 'Verse

Endeavour Calls...

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:32:12 GMT

What once was a beguiling, beckoning bowl –

A gargoyle-edged hole carved in the great

Meridiani Plain – is now falling far behind;

A rapidly-thinning line drawn between the high

Cathedral dome of Mars’ pastel-pink sky

And the pebble-spattered, track-trenched

Ground. What we found down there,

On the cliff-shadowed slopes of fair Victoria

Made us stop and stare in wonder:

Rocks sculpted into sheaths of brittle, broken blades

By millennia of dust-drenched wind;

Slanting shafts of sunlight shining

On the sea of sand dunes at its heart;

Book-leaf layers of ancient stone, glowing

Amber and gold as twilight faded to night…

What memories we leave behind..!

But on the flat and far horizon now

A new adventure calls, and if the fates allow,

If an already-weary rover’s battered body

Can somehow find the strength to carry on

For one more stolen year, one sol Opportunity will hear

Us scream and shout out in delight at the impossible sight

Of Endeavour’s Mordor hills looming up before her eyes.

And then, content, we will smile, re-living each heroic mile

Before telling Oppy “That’s far enough. Rest now, little one,

Your work is done.” And then, at last, she’ll sleep

A deep and dreaming sleep, with History as her pillow.

And here on Earth we’ll celebrate a noble rover’s

Journey across the endless dry and rippled sea

of the Great Plain of Meridiani.

THE TRENCH

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:49:49 GMT

We cannot yet go there in person – even gloved

our barely-evolved monkey paws would freeze

in Mars’ vacuum chamber air - so we built an heir,

a robot child to go and play and dig and scrape

at the cold dirt in our place; sent it racing

to an alien beach then set it scratching

at the ground to see what treasures hid beneath

its Sun-baked, rusted duricrust. Slowly, weakly,

Phoenix’s metal beak raked meakly

across Mars’ skin, slicing into it, leaving behind

a gaping wound, wide and smooth of side,

a crumbling window into Barsoom’s past life,

a mini-Marineris, the next best thing

to Being There.

When that first trench was dug I peered into my screen

and half-thought I would see the bloody stumps of worms

wriggling in its sides, cut in half by the slicing blade

of the robot’s bucket scoop swooping down from the pale pink

sky like an angry gardener’s spade. But nothing moved

down there; no beetles scuttled between those stones,

no lonely, black-shelled centipede weaved in an out

of the camera’s field of view, and I knew

no skeletal hands of gnarled and twisted roots would

reach out from the trench’s tiny grave… just slanting shafts

of sunlight casting Death dark shadows behind each carved up clod

of dirt, each picture telling the watching world

“You’ll find no fossils here.”…

Phoenix quietly went about her work… watching the shrunken

Sun rolling on its sine wave roller-coaster track

across the sky…sighing at TEGA’s tantrums,

trickling tasty bits of dirt and grit into its hungry mouth.

And as she works each whispered whirr of motors, each gentle purr

of gears disturbs the trench’s rampart walls and sends so-small

Yosemite Falls of cinnamon dust tumbling to its floor.

And now, look there – frost! A hint of ice glinting in the lee

of the stones and folds of dirt standing on its furrowed

floor, each smear and stain and fragile flake of brittle blue

proof this world is not the bone dry desert History claims,

and Life may one day grace this land again…

LEAVING VICTORIA

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:25:25 GMT

In years to come gangly young martians

will run giggling down this now-silent

slope; their elders – with shaking heads – will lope

behind, tired eyes searching for and finding

the jagged rocks and layers of stone so famous from old

photographs, taken ten thousand sols before

by a slow-motion rover that roamed Victoria’s sand-

and dust-drowned bands of fossilised dunes,

greeting each new dawn with a whir

of weary wheels, gently and gingerly feeling

its way across and along the dry shore of Duck Bay,

watching the snail-slow ebb and flow of Verde’s

velvet shadow sweep across the ground…

So sad its tracks will fade away

decades before they are replaced by boot-prints

left by pilgrims from Mars’ Evening Star.

But when those bold explorers, hearts swollen

with pride, stand on this crater’s high serrated edge

and stare down at the dune-sea far below

they’ll say “Down there, that’s where the rover

rolled when I was just a child,” then smiling,

turn their faces to the coppery Sun and wish

they’d been on Mars the day brave Opportunity

climbed out onto the plain again

and left Victoria’s secrets far behind…

First Frost

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:18:44 GMT

There it is. A frosting of fairy dust

covering the rust-red rocks

with a shimmering quilt of blue;

Tinkling and twinkling in the martian twilight,

like a billion tiny fireflies have settled

on the frozen ground… But Phoenix hears

no sound of fluttering wings, no cicadas singing

at the sky, just the dry-bone snap of ancient stones

cracking like thin ice in the migraine light

of another marmalade dawn…

Staring at our screens, seeing the hoarfrost gleaming

we smiled, thinking how the landing site

would soon be Wenceslass White, an icy

martian Narnia shining with a million diamonds’ light.

But Phoenix, staring at the same, frost-flecked plain

felt just the pain that comes with knowing death is near

and creeping closer; a rising tide of lethal cold

that will first lap at her feet then climb to coat

her shivering body in a deadly rime,

bringing to an end her too-brief life on Mars…

Through The Plumes...

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:56:12 GMT

What strange, warm-water wonderland will lie beneath me

as I fly high overhead?

Below me, rushing past – a snow-globe scene,

a fractured, cratered wintry plain of gleaming

ice as hard as stone, criss-crossed with groaning

fissures that open and close like the bone-

dry maws of some fearful buried beasts

that feed on vacuum, and scream in pain

each time they feel Great Saturn’s pull…

Peering down upon the gravity-sculpted ground

I’ll feel a million Terran eyes upon me,

wondering what wonders I will see

when I fly into bright sunlight once again:

miles-high plumes of tinkling, twinkling vapour

shining bright against the endless night

of space? Racing through them might my face feel

the gentle touch of Enceladean dust?

Tomorrow I will know, and as snow falls softly

on the moon below I watch it grow and grow and grow…

The Phoenix Feeds...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:22:50 GMT

… and so, at last, I dig.

For what seemed like an age I stared out

at the pebble-spattered ground stretched around

me – impatient to scratch and scrape my beak through

its dust-caked, sun-baked crust - but did not move,

even though I ached to seek out precious blue

buried beneath the red. Instead, I watched,

and as the sunlight warmed my shining wings, waited…

… but finally, I have fed! Tilting back

my weary, wide-eyed head

to bathe in the half-heat of the midnight sun

I can now feel Mars grit in my craw!

Raw, glass-sharp shards of cruel stone

mixed up with puffed up talc-fine dust;

all its iron long since rusted away to leave

behind the subtle tastes of silica, salt and sand…

… and now, as I stand alone on this harlequin-patterned

plain, finally I can feel tiny, delicious tongues of flame

flickering in my chest: stubborn TEGA, patiently digesting

its long-awaited first delicious mouthful

of brittle, broken rock and orange oatmeal stone,

and with no-one here to moan and groan

“stop playing with your food!” I will so

enjoy my feast as this Phoenix feeds, at last…

ARRIVAL

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:42:10 GMT

Phoenix I was named, and tomorrow

I will finally taste and fly in flame!

Screaming through the martian sky, the light

of my arrival will be bright enough

to put to shame the twin moons’ gloomy glow,

and should those weary rovers far below me

lift their dust-dimmed eyes towards the stars

they’ll see me slicing through their heaven, far

brighter and more glorious than any mere meteor.

And I, wrapped in great flapping sheets

of flame – Barsoom’s own Beowulf, riding

the raging dragon of Entry and Descent –

will cry out loudly “I am here!”

I do not fear the landing; nor do I waste

my time with worries of the million ways

my mayfly life could end before I even reach

the frozen ground. If I fail, my broken body found

a hundred years from now,

an almost-not-there stain upon Green Valley’s

barren floor my story will still be

one of victory, for I was never meant to fly;

if Fate had smiled on others meant

to touch the face of Mars I would not even

have been born, and my eyes and hands

and feet would all have flown elsewhere.

But here I am! And as Mars looms ever larger

up ahead my dream-dulled head begins

to fill with thoughts of with what I’ll see

tomorrow, when these gritty, sleep-filled eyes

of mine awake and open for the first time.

An endless open plain of ochre stone, painfully

bare, with just a lonely, frost-fringed rock

placed here and there to catch my roving eye?

Or will great boulders stand nearby,

high enough to hide the far horizon from

my view? I’ll know this, and more, soon…

One thing I will never know is

The brittle beauty of a starry martian sky.

From my valley home, so close to the gateau-layered pole,

Sol will circle me like a long lost bird;

never rising, never setting,

a molten metal ball rolling ‘round the rim

of my world as I stand alone

in the land of the Shrunken Midnight Sun,

watching my shadow sweep around me

for hour after endless, endless hour.

I shall be a sundial, marking time until I die.

Before then, my faithful friends, I long to show you wonders!

But if my flight ends in Mars’ air, and no word

is heard from me again then promise me you’ll send

another in my place, for there are secrets

and surprises here that cry out to be found,

and though I hope to dig beneath the frigid ground

to touch and taste the water there I know

Mars has destroyed more of my kind

than it has granted life. So lift your eyes

up to the sky, and as these final tortuous hours tick by

wish me nothing more than peace, and

keep me company as I sleep.

OVER HEIMDALL

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:36:37 GMT

Look…

Two specks. Two snowflake flecks of white

drifting through a fire-threaded sky:

a sign that for a brief, bright golden time

Mankind reached out across the Black

and grasped the many mysteries of Mars…

Far behind and far, far below, the great hole

of Heimdall gazes at the sky, an empty eye

socket in the ice-scraped skull of the northern

plains, stained and tamed by Time,

sighing as the Phoenix flew on by…

Just two full stop dots on a portrait of

a planet far away, but their presence proves

the paws of curious apes reached out and touched

the face of Mars; built a glittering steel butterfly

to try and tell them if they really are Alone…

Two mere pin pricks on a pixelled picture, but they

scream into the dark “We failed but tried a second time!”

And like a lamp, lighting up the abyssal martian night,

those Phoenix flames ignited the sense of wonder yet again

in all who watched her landing.

What Will I See..?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:07:54 GMT

The first time I open my sleep-heavy eyes
what alien landscape will curve around me?
A Barsoomian Narnia, with petrified fields
of snow-capped rocks and lonely frost-cracked
boulders, standing boldly beneath the glaring arctic Sun
like shrunken Easter Island statues?
Or will there be no stones to see, just an endless plain
of pale polygons stretching like a crumpled quilt
to the horizon, each icy lily pad a stepping stone
leading my startled eyes to a sky higher and wider
than any ever seen on Mars before..?

I wonder… will that sky be white – a mirror of Old Earth’s
bright Antarctic heaven? – or will it shine with a polished
metal hue, a cathedral-ceiling dome of brittle silver-blue
dwarfing every ridge and rock and stone cupped
in Green Valley’s gentle hands? Perhaps the frigid land
chosen to be my frozen tomb will stand silent
beneath a sea of blushing, perfect pink? Whichever
colour wins, will I witness wind-teased, lacy clouds
racing overhead, chasing each other like children at play,
mocking me with their faerie grace and speed
while I stare up at them helplessly;
my clumsy, manhole cover feet rooted to the frozen ground
as if I were a tree and they were birds?

Around the shrunken Sun I imagine a ring
of hoarfrost-on-Holly fire;
a perfect circle of Mother of Pearl light,
the crowning glory of the first
arctic martian sunset ever seen by Man.
On either side: a soft-edged slice of rainbow;
known as “sundogs” on Old Earth
the first Barsoomians shall call them
“Deja” and “fair Thuvia” in tribute
to the martian maids who stole John
Carter’s heart with just a sigh. And close by,
perhaps, an azure spark – Earth,
glinting as a sapphire gleams
when held up to the Moon until, too soon,
she drops into the burning dusk,
her flickering flame snuffed out…

And when my metal monkey paw claws at the
ground beneath my feet, what sight will greet
me as its dust and dirt are wrenched
and torn apart? Within that long-awaited trench
will my eyes spy only lines of old Noachian ice
or layers of “Can it be..?” green? Will My Mars be
as dead as the burial plains of Sagan’s hero Vikings,
or will my graphs whisper “There is Life here…”?

Soon I will know; soon my eyes
will open on a breathtaking new world,
and though no flag will I unfurl
to flutter and fly o’er Green Valley’s
frigid floor, on Landing Day I’ll stake a claim for
All Mankind, declaring in bold Shakespearean tones:
“We shall know no rest ‘til we have found Life here!”
and slowly, but surely, I'll play my role in that great Quest.

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

Look Out Below...

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:11:01 GMT

Strange to think a single rose-pink snowflake

floating from the frigid polar sky could have been

the start. Settling on the silent ice as softly as a sigh,

pressing on the white-capped scarp just hard

enough to send a tickle of a tremor

through its gateau-like layers of rock

it shocked the sleeping stones awake,

setting them shivering and quivering just enough

to shake loose a crust of ochre-dusted snow

and send it tumbling to the world below,

blossoming into powder puffs as it scuffed

each ledge and boulder on the way,

spraying veils of flour-fine ice into the

vacuum-thin air before crumping

into the polar plain and billowing away

from the high cliff’s crumbling base…

Imagine walking in the Great Wall shadow

of that scarp; delighting in the flint-sharp polar light,

rejoicing in the silence, relishing the peace

when suddenly the ground beneath your feet

begins to quake, and looking up

you see snow flaking off the cliff. Soon rocks and grit

a thousand shades of pink and red

are falling from the sky – a dry waterfall

of icing sugar frost and pollen-fine dust,

rushing through the air to strike the ground

without a sound in a martian mare’s tail cloud

of tan and titian fines that huffs and puffs

towards you, a slow-motion Barsoomian tsunami

as weak as the beating of a faerie’s wing…

Such sights our eyes will never see,

and I cannot help but envy those who, in the future, do.