Earthrise, Apollo 11
The Parliament of Poets
February 4, 2011
Book XII
Mbeku, the flying African tortoise, like the last stage of a Saturn V rocket, propels us out of earth orbit into a quarter of a million miles to the moon, 25,000 miles per hour, clutching me in his feathered arms, his cracked shell pointing backwards at the moon, hurtling, pirouetting, twirling, in the weightlessness of space, in brilliant white sunlight, in the blackest black of eternity, through timelessness, into the future.
Back to the Sea of Tranquility, back to the descent stage of the Lunar Module, of Apollo 11. Third time on the moon, the Poet of the Moon, more times than any astronaut. After a long journey, arduous, an ordeal.
The far side of the moon, as dark as the dark night of the soul. The starry cosmos, a universe of galaxies, sextillions of stars. Lunar sunrise. Earthrise…
The end of Nihilism and Scientism, the unity of science and religion, reason and intuition, the Imagination, the two cultures reconciled. The unity of Unity, oneness, our fragile, delicate Earth, three dimensional in its fullness, floating through eternal timelesssness. A new panorama rises before humanity.
The Parliament of Poets, nearly three years of writing, after decades, a full rough draft.
