The Astronauts

They sail the star-seas
like mariners from a poem of Homer.
This earth-like Ithaca,
Where Ulysses once was King
of all men's dreams to leave the land
and go in serach of mythic sands —
this earth recedes behind them,
like a pebble sinking slowly in a pond.

Their ships move through waves of dreams
towards the diamond islands of the sea of night.
They go — like those first earthbound men
Who took the whale-roads in search of shores
Where laughing porpoises played in pasture —
they go to claim the golden fleece,
the silver chalice, the golden apples of the sun.
They go to seek the shore of all man's searches:
that airless, earthless land of the First Voice
which uttered in a silent night
that first command: Let there be light.