A Space Odyssey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

 An earlier version of the poem was written in 2002; it appeared in a Poetry Now [Forward Press] anthology 'These Days' in 2004 and in my collection later the same year. I have since revised and reworked the original poem and changed the title.

Regular readers will know that as I prepare posts for the blog, I often find myself making minor or (as in this case) major revisions to poems where earlier versions have already been published. This is not so much a criticism of the first version as, looked at again from a distance of some years, I sometimes feel the original can be improved upon. Some people get in touch to say they prefer the original/s while others may prefer my revision/s but like both; others still, ask why I tinker with poems at all and/or why I settled for the original when it was ‘quite obviously’ the genesis for a different poem altogether. Ah, but it would not have been in the least bit obvious to me at the time I wrote it. I must have been satisfied enough to see it published. Only much later, do I sometimes find myself unhappy with what, yes, I may now see as the genesis of another poem.

As I have said many times, love takes many shapes and forms; of all these, the love of one person for another, sexual and/or platonic makes the greater contribution in mapping out the most wonderful journeys we take across time and space albeit always vulnerable to human error. As for sexuality, it but is one of love’s coordinates along with mutual understanding; it also needs to be up to the task of repudiating if not discarding any socio-cultural-religious elements that would not only point us in another direction but also see us heartsick voyagers in a nightmare.

Needless to say map reading of this particular nature is (or should be) instinctive. At the same time, we need to appreciate that one person’s natural instincts may well be another’s nemesis; if the old adage - where there’s a will, there’s a way - may not always prove to be the case, there is still a lot to be said for at least trying to push existing parameters to accommodate both.

A SPACE ODYSSEY

In the saddest twilight
known to man or woman,
find no gladder omen
than in the sigh of a wistful virgin,
left to watch birds fly
(far too high to identify)
sailing the fairest horizon,
teasing the inner eye

Oh, the beauty, mystery,
privileges and passion of voyagers
in personal space

Glimpses of Heaven,
but no word of invitation
or greater loneliness
(nor sweeter) known to humankind;
a hidden planet
where no others may go
and only those we choose
chance getting close

Identifying isolation
among starry splinters of its galaxy,
light years away

So near, yet so far,
grim mortality yet to loose
its stranglehold on us,
allowing us to breathe that more easily
among lush vegetation
of the surreal kind
than where a half dead
imagination applies

Ultimate contradiction,
conjoined isolates hell bent on pushing
parameters of space

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2011

[Note The genesis of this poem (originally under the title, Time To Ourselves) can be found in 1st eds. of The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004]