A poem inspired by H. Melville during a long trip to Sagittarius A.
Space hermits, these Commanders,
issuing from their ant-hills in the sky,
overrun and conquer the dark expanse
like so many Alexanders,
parceling out among them
the Fallows, Silentium, and Gallipolis.
The sky is his; he owns it,
as Emperors own empires.
The merchantmen’s freighters
be but busy highways and railroads.
The bountyman’s Fer-de-Lance
But floating forts and frontier outposts.
Even the pirate’s Viper
traversing the stars like highwaymen,
they but plunder other ships
like petty kingdoms before Caesar in Gaul.
He, the Commander,
alone resides and riots in the Vast.
He alone hurdles into it in thin metal ships,
to and fro plowing it as his own plantation.
There is his home, there lies his business.
He lives within the dark expanses,
like a whale in the sea.
He hides among the asteroids
and climbs unknown peaks
like chamois hunters climb the Alps.
For years he knows not the land
so that when he comes to it at last
it smells like another world,
more strangely than the moon to an Earthsman.
Like the landless gull that at sunset folds her wings
and is rocked to sleep between billows,
so too at nightfall the Commander,
beyond the sight of land, love, and government
spools down his jump drive, and lays him to his rest,
while under his very pillow rush comets and dark.
Space hermits, these Commanders,
issuing from their ant-hills in the sky,
overrun and conquer the dark expanse
like so many Alexanders,
parceling out among them
the Fallows, Silentium, and Gallipolis.
The sky is his; he owns it,
as Emperors own empires.
The merchantmen’s freighters
be but busy highways and railroads.
The bountyman’s Fer-de-Lance
But floating forts and frontier outposts.
Even the pirate’s Viper
traversing the stars like highwaymen,
they but plunder other ships
like petty kingdoms before Caesar in Gaul.
He, the Commander,
alone resides and riots in the Vast.
He alone hurdles into it in thin metal ships,
to and fro plowing it as his own plantation.
There is his home, there lies his business.
He lives within the dark expanses,
like a whale in the sea.
He hides among the asteroids
and climbs unknown peaks
like chamois hunters climb the Alps.
For years he knows not the land
so that when he comes to it at last
it smells like another world,
more strangely than the moon to an Earthsman.
Like the landless gull that at sunset folds her wings
and is rocked to sleep between billows,
so too at nightfall the Commander,
beyond the sight of land, love, and government
spools down his jump drive, and lays him to his rest,
while under his very pillow rush comets and dark.