The Awakening
ROBERT NEWTON CALVERT
I would rather the fire storms of atmospheres
Than this cruel descent from a thousand years
Of dreams, into the starkness of the capsule.
Where two of our crew still lay suspended cool
In their tombs of sleep.
Those nagging choirs of memory
The tubes and wires
Worming from their flesh to machinery
I would have to cut
Such midwifery is but one function of the leader here
Floating in a sac of fluid dark
A clear century of space
Away from Earth
While one man stares from the trauma of his birth
Attending to the hypno-tapes
Assuring him
That this was reality
However grim
Our journey's end
Landing itself was nothing
We touched upon a shelf of rock
Selected by the auto-mind
And left a galaxy of dreams behind