III New
Every dome we built is overgrown with tendrils,
They say the time to civilize our satellite
Is coming soon;
Architects and doctors, planners with their pencils
Design and theorize and calibrate
For living-room.
Thinking stops the blood, a mounting terror festers,
The leaving of a land is no small sacrifice
Even for us;
Seldom in the drunkest dreams of our ancestors
Could such an odyssey have been devised
We dare at last.
Trapped between the smell of history and stasis,
We plot a future where forgetfulness will cross
The crescent Earth;
Children we encounter (ours or something else’s)
Will seek in vain within their glossaries
The word for birth.