Deep Space Slumber Samantha Liao ‘23
T
he cosmos is not scorching or glacial, Nor lonely, cold, and dark. It is a fine bright ether, A benevolent Maker humming with secrets to depart. I tell you, outer space is your birth place, How strange to call it alien! You were there, at the fire of creation And you will burn through the crust of the earth Until you reach its molten foundation. We have come here not to lose our spark But to impart it Upon the planet where our ancestors started. After earth’s brief embrace, Your bones and blood cooling, It will be cosmic steps you retrace. For I have scoured the heavens, And my body’s waking abode holds extremes That this expanse could ever dream. Every night, my spirit ascends the ether, To slide upon Saturn’s smooth rings And bathe in the sweet warmth of Venus, To saddle up asteroids and battle things That swim in black holes, their deepness unfeared For with my light spirit, it is recreation I pioneer.
22 | ESSE 2021
That space is lonely is the oddest phrase I have come across in my time. Perhaps out of fear for dwellers of blaze, Or glacial beings serpentine, They prefer to assume this cosmic sea sterile, But I tell you, you are at no peril Of unimaginable horrors of spirits Or of some maddening experience. For all earthly creatures once took the oath To descend from bright and fiery homes, The hydrogen fusions that bathed them. And in order to do their solemn duty – Quickly took hold of an asteroid hem To protect the universe’s life most truly. From what, pray tell, should we be guarded? From the Darkness daily we’ve discarded! Hiding from cities’ cramped fluorescence, It gathers in droves where it changes its essence Free from all predators, but not luminescence. And, oh! what burden it brings! When it catches sight Of an earthling quite out of place: “You’ve taken your vows,
To live mortal now And that comes with its limits, For this, your memory’s dawn, At sunrise, I will trim it!” Dark matter of galaxies foregone, The weight which wakes you up groggy And obscures your vast travels – For they quickly unravel – In your terrestrial body. My short excursion ends When I grow tired Of the cosmic capers my soul desired. For tonight I explored the Milky Way, One day, it will be the cosmos. The silvery soul envelops itself In the atmosphere of the planet With widest oceans and liquid water, Where I have provisionally landed. Transformed by mist, Our bodies awaken, and spirit takes rest Sloughing quick memories, The soul stays asleep, Awaiting the joy soon it will reap When linen shrouds our chests.
Ellie Mentgen ‘23 Other Worldly Drawing on Paper
