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[Poem] The Messenger Approaches

Jan 24, '08 11:38 PM
for everyone

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Thirty times or more blue Terra has swung
'round Sol since Mariner stared doen upon this firefly of a world.
From Earth it is but a sequin "star" - hard to find
behind the fading glow of a marmalade-hued dusk
or a frosted lavender-dawn - but now I rush
towards the Sun a crescent Hermes is revealed.
Before me wheels a world of wonder!
A cosmic cannonball covered in rock and dust,
its crispy-thin crust cratered and cracked,
wracked by meandering rupes,
the Sun's cruel heat beating down on its light-drowned,
pseudo-lunar lands where no man or woman
will ever stand without fear of death by fire and flame...

But safe behind my shining shield I steal a glance
at Mercury's scythe-sharp, sickle blade face.
No trace of detail on that rocky slice just yet;
but soon, soon that seductive slice of silvery light will turn into a glowing orb,
and as it grows before my eyes I'll marvel at new sights
and send their pictures back to you,
waiting in front of your flickering screens to see
what Hermes has been hiding all these years.
Have no fear, it will have been worth the wait...

(by Stuart Atkinson, 2008)
~~~~~
Catatan:
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) adalah wahana milik NASA yang dikirim ke Merkurius, planet yang paling dekat dengan Matahari. "Kurir" ini diluncurkan awal Agustus 2004 dan saat ini sedang ber-flyby mengintai Merkurius. Dalam mitologi Romawi Merkurius merupakan kurir para dewa. Cocok sekali bukan antara nama dan target misi? Keterangan lebih lengkap mengenai MESSENGER ada di http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html

Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Tags: puisi, solar system

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Ode to Alien

Jan 14, '08 1:43 AM
for everyone

Sewaktu membuka halaman-halaman akhir dari tulian C. D. Impey dalam Vistas in Astronomy (1995) berjudul The Search for Life in The Universe: A Humanistic Perspective, saya terantuk pada puisi di bawah. Perdebatan mengenai kehidupan di luar Tata Surya menempati arena budaya yang luas, tulis Impey. Saat itu dukungan untuk SETI (Searh for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) sangat minim dari Kongres AS. Pendanaan seret dan olok-olok mencari alien dihembuskan. Di sisi lain, publik justru mendukung meskipun dukungan ini didorong atas keyakinan adanya alien alih-alih pemahaman ilmiahnya. Impey wrote, "Arts and Humanities can bridge the gap between knowledge and ignorance." Bukankah imajinasi fiksi sains telah begitu menakjubkan? Dan, puisi karya Diane Ackerman berjudul Ode to Alien (1983) ini menurut Impey menunjukkan bahwa kehidupan di alam semesta (kehidupan di luar Bumi) menempati domain penyair sama banyaknya dengan domain ilmuwan.

Beast, I've known you
in all love's countries, in a baby's face
knotted like walnut meat,
in the crippled obbligato
of a polio-stricken friend,
in my father's eyes
pouchy as two marsupials,
in the grizzly radiance
of a winter sunset, in my lover's arm
veined like the blue-ridge mountains.
To me, you are beautiful
until proven ugly.

Anyway, I'm no cosmic royalty
either: I'm a bastard of matter
descended from countless rapes
and invasions
of cell upon cell upon cell.
I crawled out of slime;
I swung through the jungles
of Madagascar;
I drew wildebeest on the caves at Lascaux;
I lived a grim life
hunting peccary and maize
in some godforsaken mudhole in the veldt.

I may squeal
from the pointy terrorof a wasp,
or shun the breezy rhetoric
of a fire;
but, whatever your form, gait, or healing,
you are no beast to me,
I who am less than a heart-flutter
from the brute;
I who have been beastly so long.
Like me, you are the pool
of quicksilver in the mist,
fluid, shimmery, fleeing, called life.

And life, full of pratfall and poise,
life where a bit of frost
one morning can turn barbed wire
into string of stars,
life aromatic with red-hot pizzazz
drumming ha-cha-cha
through every blurt, nub, sag,
pang, twitch, war, bloom of it,
life as unlikely as a pelican, or a thunderclap,
life's our tour of duty
on our far-flung planets,
our cage, our dole, our reverie

Have you arts?
Do waves dash over your brain
like tide rip along a rocky coast?
Does your moon slide
into the night's back pocket,
just full when it begins to wane,
so that all joy seems interim?
Are you flummoxed by that millpond,
deep within the atom, rippling out every star?
even if your blood is quarried,
I pray you well,
and hope my prayer your tonic.

I sit at my desk now
like a tiny proprietor,
a cottage industry in every cell.
Diversity is my middle name.
My blood runs laps;
I doubt yours does,
but we share an abstract fever
called thought,
a common swelter of a sun.
So, Beast, pause a moment,
you are welcome here.
I am life, and life loves life.

~~~~~
Catatan:
Gambar di atas adalah Arecibo Message, pesan digital yang dikirimkan ke gugus bola M13 dari teleskop radio Arecibo di Puerto Rico (kalau pernah nonton film Contact, pasti kebayang kayak gimana heheheh) dan terkenal sebagai usaha umat manusia berkomunikasi dengan makhluk luar angkasa (E.T). Gambar diperoleh dari news.cornell.edu.

Tags: astronomi, puisi

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Ratna's posts with tag: puisi