Star Cycles

I have watched Venus—seen continents and seas Unknowingly, in a dew-gem hung in the western evening A little over the Joshua trees and aspiring yucca; On my desert threshold envying a little that young planet Which must yet run the course of the elements From stone-breasted saurian down to brain and extinction, The dissipation of water, the tamed and the dying sea. Now she is young—as stars go—and cool in my western window. Now, upon Mars Deserts of red sand creep wider year by year as the false Spring of the ice-caps lessens and fails. The thirst-tortured Martians see earth float in their evening As a sickle of water, drinking her light Amid the thin harvest of empty sea beds, worshiping Her cold sea-wink in the darkness Of their last and impoverished nights.

I, in the desert, the first of those deserts which will later Engulf the whole earth, gaze westward at Venus, hazily thinking How, in Time’s future, the people in cities clustering our dying ice-cap Will yearn from a myriad housetops toward that silver embodiment Of green woods, and the lost, unforgettable seas.