Dreaming For The Extraterrestrials

An astronomer dwells as a hermit in my mind,
An entity I reap alive from a scholar’s treatise
Not so much for his science but for his calculated dreams.

The stars obsess him
Yet not with the flower and the laughter
Of Saint-Exupéry’s vanquished prince,
In the grandeur of his sky-scanning lens
He could not even see half a baby’s buttocks
Mellow, forlorn and pleading,
An identity which revolts
Against the dead holes of his graphical moon.

His ears are attuned against the noises of
His very household,
The cold stampings of homogenizing machines
And the underground rumble of nuclear A-tests.
He listens instead to the hollow of a seashell space
With hopes of decoding a stellar message
Descended from his extraterrestrial dreams.

His scientific mind summons
The wail of a night freight to the stars,
Across the midnight sky, courses in escape
Suffering the curse of a punctured,
Inflated earth balloon,
In time races with the devils
Of his missiles and the social will.

When are the extraterrestrials arriving ?
This aging astronomer I dare ask,
And teach us of infinity
The wisdom that we lack
Or diagnose the infirmity which ails us?
They may not have our advanced receivings
Should they come too late,
This astronomer’s precision
Could only best guess.

Author’s Note:

‘Dreaming For The Extraterrestrials’ is one of 5 poems of an untitled collection written in late 1975 and early 1976. The collection saw publication in the Focus Philippines magazine issue of 21 August 1976.

It is 2017 now, and we continue to anticipate the arrivals. For what? For a bit more wisdom? For a bit more mercy? For a bit more time?

Today I was told: shampoo is okay to use, conditioner not. 🙁

— SSJ, 17 August 2017