BBC World Service / Click Radio: 'Here's a poem about space'

Here’s a poem about space

Here’s a poem about space 
And the race to live on Mars
A poem about space travel
Sustaining life beyond the stars

Does this poem begin

In a galaxy, far, far away

Or does it start with one giant leap

for mankind, one hot summers day

July nineteen-sixty-nine

Or does it begin with the pyramids

The first architects and astronomers

Measuring space and time.

Do you remember when

Your spaceship was the top bunk bed

Wearing tin foil as your space cloak

And your mum’s colander on your head

Do you remember when the dog was Chewbacca

Your plaits were like Princess Leia

Your light-saber was the broom handle

And space was fiction, far, far away from here

Now humans will be Martians

Imagine that, man will live on Mars

Each night they’ll watch two moons rise

And Earth will be one of the distant stars

Here’s a poem about space
And the race to live on Mars
A poem about space travel
Sustaining life beyond the stars

I’m listening to Gustav Holst 'The Planets'

Picturing swirling clouds of red and iron ore

Violent dust storms on the rusty planet

And Mars the Roman God of War

The namesake of the month of March

Son of Jupiter, father of Rome.

How can they live in harmony on Mars

When we don’t live in harmony at home?

How will we supply and maintain

A new human colony in the sky,

When we drain and frack and suck

Planet Earths resources dry?

Science is the human mirror image of nature

And so then is music and books and art

Spending billions to launch a rocket of hope

While we wreck and rip this world apart

Here’s a poem about space
And the race to live on Mars
A poem about space travel
Sustaining life beyond the stars

And now David Bowie’s in my headphones

Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow

I still don't understand that lyric

But I bet the Martians will somehow

Man’s obsession to conquer outer space

Is as long and old as time and tide and rock and sea

From the first moon bathing caveman

To the earliest philosophy

But - 

What if the night sky is a black blanket

And pin-prick moth-holes are the stars

We’re living in a giants fruit bowl on a grape we call Earth

And that tangerine is Mars.

(c) Salena Godden 2015

Commissioned as poet in residence on Click Radio, BBC World Service

Broadcast live in front of a packed BBC Radio Theatre on March 31st 2015

'A Space and Citizen Science Special' Listen again, the whole show is here 

NEW! To hear this 2minute poem on its own the iplayer clip is now here, click here

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 There is a vyclone video of the poem, click here nyv.me/l/Etb3 

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