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Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

Page 14

by Frederick Turner


  280

  And where the white road crests, and crests again

  In grander and still grander openings

  Over ravines so deep their dark is cold,

  And the hills’ heads dance along the horizon,

  And the sun shines as brilliantly as noon

  But from the side, and silence is a sigh

  Of all things settling into a new way;

  There the known stranger catches up with Chance,

  Quietly, as if it were no moment,

  And they keep pace unspeaking for a while.

  290

  Chance is surprised, seeing whom they have sent;

  And knows at once that his death is now here.

  He had not thought it would be quite so soon;

  Admires the cleanness and address they show.

  As the sun bleeds over the remote sea

  The temple rises up upon the ridge:

  Built by Iktinos to the god of light

  Apollo Epikouros, succorer

  In sickness, now grown about with flowers;

  It’s seen no sacrifice two thousand years.

  300

  The place is quite deserted, but for one

  Old man with a donkey and a squint eye,

  Stained white whiskers and a powdery voice,

  Who offers them a primitive reed pipe

  Carved on the spot amid the smell of straw,

  A smell so pungent it is frightening.

  They are surprised; such sights were frequent once,

  But the new Greece affords them seldom now.

  They buy a flute and leave; but when they reach

  The temple entrance and look back, he’s gone.

  310

  Though roofless, the adyton is in darkness.

  Strange Ionic columns tower up;

  Huge dim spur walls split the sanctuary;

  A red blade of sunset sweeps the floor

  With two long shadows, indistinguishable

  But that the one is left, the other right.

  While Tripitaka waits, Chance makes his tour;

  The stars come out as if they shot a needle

  Through the attenuated fabric of

  The day, to sew the bodies of the heroes

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  Into eternal constellated forms.

  By the last light Chance shares the food he’s brought

  With his quiet young executioner.

  Chance talks lightly over dinner of

  The Greek mystery; how from that bright noon

  Of classical achieved perfection in

  This life—thought, art, the dance of war, the sharp

  And plangent sweetness of their poetry—

  They turned away into ages of worship,

  Of mysticism and forgetfulness,

  330

  Of ikons stylized into fleshless gold,

  As if a thousand years of divine dream

  Must follow and blot out the memory

  Of one age of human excellence;

  But how meanwhile another Greece was born:

  Of peasant pleasures, wine and pallikares—

  For contemplation of eternity

  Must turn to innocence, and innocence

  Enacted is the body of lived time;

  And thus Pythagoras was right to say

  340

  The soul must be incarnate once again

  After its purifying in the stream.

  Just before turning in Chance glances up

  At Tripitaka, like a trusting child

  At bed time; “Give me your promise you will

  Let me live out the night and see the dawn;

  I’ll be quite happy if I see the dawn.”

  First light. The two men wake together, look

  At each other shyly as they stretch,

  Like bride and groom on that first changed morning

  350

  Of the honeymoon. Chance has had a dream

  About the last summer that Rose and he

  Dwelt in the house of Devereux before

  They separated—though they did not know it

  At the time, forever. The children were

  Grown up, and traveling, or working now

  Out in the plains of Mars, and could not break

  The perfect intimacy of a dying marriage.

  And it was infinitely sweet; adulteries

  Of feeling, freedoms opening to worlds

  360

  Of grief, and loss, and new manners of being.

  They picnicked grandly by the Evenlode,

  Silver, champagne, white linen, lovemaking

  Where she was muslin and Chanel, and he

  Was gallantry and stallions, as tireless as

  The trunked elephant, tender as swansdown.

  But this was all at last a violation of

  Her being, a penetration to her inner soul,

  A crime, a crime worse than a rape, a taking

  By the achieved triumph of the will

  370

  Of the last citadel of female dream.

  The very perfectness of difference

  Between the man and woman was the blade

  That severed their connection, and they knew it.

  Rose could not keep her Chance and save her soul.

  And now in earnest the two men must decide

  How this thing is to be done; amateurs

  Of such an act, as any man must be

  Who steps upon a new planet of the soul

  And sets out on an act that must transfigure

  380

  And translate the personality of

  Him who acts, unrecognizable

  To him before who contemplated action;

  A metamorphosis into a new

  Species, with terrifying organs formed

  For purposes unknown to their possessor.

  Like two boys trying homosexuality

  They catch each other’s eye and, sheepish, smile,

  Get serious. “Well, how’s it done?” asks Chance.

  The sky is turquoise. Mountains float like veils

  390

  Of black silk southeast towards Lacedaemon.

  Chance is a strong man. He attacks at once,

  Gets in one blow. But Tripitaka spins;

  His left heel smashes Chance’s knee, his elbow

  Crushes the ribcage, and Chance coughs up blood.

  Horribly clumsy work. The rising sun

  Strikes on the altar. Chance struggles up, smiles,

  For after all he is there in the world

  As happy as he always was; attacks again.

  Then Tripitaka breaks his neck and throws

  400

  His body down the dewy chasm of night.

  It is two years later, at the delayed funeral of Chance on Mars, where he has asked to be buried. We learn of the death of Freya, whether by suicide or at the hands of her guards, and of the Concordat of Taos whereby the rebels gained their independence. Comet Kali falls upon the plains of Mars, providing heat, water, and gas for the planet in its transformation by higher and higher forms of life. Charlie Lorenz, Freya’s widower, courts Freya’s sister Beatrice, and Hillel Sharon, general of the Martian forces, courts both Ximene and Marisol.

  Scene v:

  The Death of the Comet

  Butterfly’s wing: the name the spacemen give

  To this new terrain of the northern plains

  Where gently undulating country glows

  With the soft fire of a thousand pigments.

  Here the next stage of ecogenesis

  Has reached its climax in a magic carpet

  Of golden furs and powdery crimsons,

  Spore-yellows, saturated browns and blues,

  Purples shot with greens, and fleshy pinks,

  10

  Open mild glitterings of slimes and foams:

  The saprophytes that feed on defunct germs,

  Funguses, orchidoids, mycetozoa,

  Slime
molds with delicate sporangia

  Like little lampshades, phalluses, or combs,

  Formed from the mobile eggwhite of that mass

  Of naked zygotes called plasmodium;

  Yeasts in their glorious and rancid forms;

  The air softened with spores and protoplasts.

  No breathing yet; for Ganesh Wills has drawn

  20

  Their metabolic plan as anaerobes

  Though now already there are swathes of ruin

  Where richer belts of oxygen have burnt

  The tender membranes and the naked tissue

  Of organisms not inured or bred

  To that strong caustic and hard stimulant.

  The cortege has come out a mile or more—

  Perhaps a hundred men and women, each

  With a black band about the shoulder armor

  Of their space suits; a pair of smaller figures

  30

  Who must be children, in the honored place,

  Hand in hand behind the pallbearers.

  The two refrigerated caskets ride

  At the vanguard, draped with the flag of Mars—

  A crimson snake in style reminiscent

  Of the pennon of the thirteen colonies

  (Don’t Tread On Me), but standing on its tail

  Coiled in an open helix, with a ruff

  Of wings at its neck, on a field of green.

  Over each flag is laid a body band

  40

  In black, marked with the sigil VRE.

  Above them in the hazy evening sky

  Streams a huge portent, like a flaming ghost:

  The comet Kali, in its final fall

  Upon the many-colored fields of Mars.

  And so to interpose a little ease.

  What story shall I tell about this puzzle,

  This other casket, borne along with Chance?

  There was the coverup, of course; the clerk

  Of court suborned, no record of parole,

  50

  Counsellor Vico’s testimony void;

  The doctor’s electronic tag a myth;

  The prisoner’s attempted getaway;

  The honest guard’s pursuit; the last attempt

  By Chance that morning on the mountainside

  To slip his captor, and his fatal stumble.

  Consider Tripitaka, who must now,

  The first time in his life, embrace a lie;

  And who knows what amazement of blood guilt

  That Garrison must know when he remembers

  60

  How his permission had empowered Gaea’s;

  And as for her, a sudden recollection

  Of sweetest love along the river Glyme

  As if this sacrifice had set the old Rose free.

  But still I temporize and put it off.

  Let it be my responsibility

  To knock and enter Freya’s prison cell

  And tell her of her father. Chance to me

  Has come to be the purpose of this story

  And it’s a dull place without him; if his fire

  70

  Survive in Freya, let her walk the road

  That some have traveled to that other country

  And call him back to us, to take the wheel

  Again, and laugh, as we remember him.

  And so her face, as pale as death, turns down

  That darkened grove where the birds do not sing;

  Her fury passes all the gates as if

  She held the bough and honeycomb and lyre

  Of passport and safe conduct in that place;

  But Freya’s hands are empty as are all

  80

  Who’d drink in purity the elixir

  Of cold communion with the vanished dead.

  And that whole country is in truth deserted;

  No schools of spirits flock like autumn leaves;

  Picture a funpark in the winter, or

  The cellars of a bombed and sodden ruin.

  As she thrusts on into the dark, the cave

  Shrinks to a funnel, like the painted streets

  Of the perspective theater, a daub

  Of plaster-dust that, to the audience,

  90

  Appears a tall Palladian thoroughfare

  That might if followed to the vanishing point

  Take us beyond the city wall to fields,

  And hills, and an Arcadian summer sky.

  But Freya finds him in the end; he’s thrown

  Like a bundle of old clothes in a corner,

  His arms about his knees, almost asleep.

  “Chance my old love, my daddy-prince, my be

  Boss, my gallant general, come back to us;

  Why do you hide your head and turn away?”

  100

  She takes him by the shoulder and would kiss

  His bloodstained hair; a moment then as if

  He recognizes her and smiles a little

  In forgetfulness, a child in a dream;

  His cheek works as he might be now about

  To speak, but nothing comes, and that intent

  But distant look, that strange preoccupation

  Falls again, and Freya almost angry

  Shakes her dead father like a spoiled child.

  Slowly, and mutedly compared to him

  110

  Who sent his ships across the fells of space,

  Chance starts to speak. “Look for me there, my love.

  Back where the dawn is coming, where my eyes

  Are growing in the head of spring. My voice

  Is almost gone already. It’s the children

  Calling me. All that were here have heard

  And have departed for the world, or else

  They never were. It’s hard to speak. We are

  The corner of the present you may turn

  At any time, and be in paradise.”

  120

  With this he falls asleep; do what she may,

  Freya cannot arouse him any more.

  But when at last she stands and takes her leave

  She finds no landmark and no blaze to show

  The way she came. No clue or chart is here

  Permitted, and no poet has power to guide.

  After a little while she understands;

  There is no coming back from where she is.

  Nor can she find her father’s waiting-place;

  But not unhappy, for she feels the change,

  130

  That gift of all she is into the world,

  Not, for a woman, so unlike the melting

  Of the breast into the baby’s soft gums,

  That last negation of all negatives,

  The waking to the freedom of the world,

  The settlement upon the edge of spring

  Where the new moment finds its genesis.

  But if I tell this story, it’s forbidden

  To reveal another tale: what was the truth

  Of what the jailors and the councilors

  140

  Discovered in the morning in her cell:

  The body dangling, the knotted belt,

  The black tongue, and the green and open eyes.

  Those of the party of the colonists

  Said that the UN guards had murdered her

  On Gaea’s orders, to complete the work;

  The inquest though returned a clear verdict:

  Suicide while of unbalanced mind.

  Freya returns to Mars now with her father.

  This was not all. Another morning dawned

  150

  With the empyreal brightness of the summer

  Turning into fall, in Greece, a land

  That’s seen such happenings before, and scorns

  To dim her daybreaks for the tears of men;

  And a scared steward found upon its bed

  The body, swollen out of recognition,

  Self-poisoned, of the traitor Orval Root.

  For h
e had kept his faith to Chance’s daughter

  And followed her beyond the world of lies.

  But still the funeral proceeds, the music

  160

  Of the band rings tinnily in the earphones,

  Playing an old march, Chance’s favorite,

  A sad bullfighter’s dirge from Mexico;

  And there ahead a scaffold is set up

  Just at the projected point of impact

  Of comet Kali, blazing overhead

  A portent and a glory from a dream.

  The cortege halts; the caskets are manhandled

  Up to the apex of the pyramid.

  About the scaffold stand the conquistadors:

  170

  Beatrice white-faced, her eyes like coals;

  Charlie by her, and the twins, Wolf and Irene;

  Ganesh with big tears running down his face;

  Sumikami carried by two strong men

  (All these released according to provisions

  The Taos Concordat framed in ’thirty-four);

  Commander de Vivar; her rebel daughter

  Marisol, relieved of her command,

  Elected to the planetary council

  Upon the ticket of the pacifists;

  180

  Hillel Sharon, with his guerrilla’s slouch;

  And many others of the freedom forces,

  Space men and women, farmers, engineers,

  Members of council, artists, gardeners.

  Now follows on the office of the dead:

  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye/

  To put on bodies incorruptible/

  Et lux perpetua/ in die illa/

  Tuba mirum spargens sonum/ teste

  David cum Sibylla/ confutatis/

  190

  Flammis acribus addictis/ quasi

  Cinis/ lacrymosa/ dona eis

  Requiem, aeternam requiem.

  We shall be changed we shall be changed we shall.

  But now they must make haste, because already

  Winds are blowing, full of spores, over

  The glowing and grotesque domains of Mars,

  And little earthquakes make the footing awkward;

  The comet minutely enlarges, and the klaxons

  Wail as apocalypse from dome and tower.

  200

  Across the planet the last prep teams

  Embark on shuttles and escape to orbit;

  Others upon the far side of the globe,

  Scared volunteers, descend to hardened bunkers,

  Ready to monitor the banks of sensors

  Designed to tell if Kali’s a success.

  Eleven hours to cometstrike. No garden

  Ever in the history of the world

  (Unless old Terra in the fiery days

  Of coalescence when the stars were young

 

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