Today's Beautiful Gem: "Voyage to the Moon" by Archibald MacLeish

"Presence among us, wanderer in our skies,
dazzle of silver in our leaves and on our waters silver,
O silver evasion in our farthest thought--
`the visiting moon' ... `the glimpses of the moon' ...
and we have touched you!

"From the first of time, before the first of time,
before the first men tasted time, we thought of you.
You were a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives-- perhaps a meaning to us...

"Now our hands have touched you in your depth of night.
Three days and three nights we journeyed,
steered by farthest stars climbed outward,
crossed the invisible tide-rip where the floating dust
falls one way or the other in the void between,
followed the other down, encountered
cold, faced death--unfathomable emptiness...

"Then, the fourth day evening, we decended,
made fast, set foot at dawn upon your beaches,
sifted between your fingers your cold sand.
We stand here in the dusk, the cold, the silence...

"and here, as at the first of time, we lift our heads.
Over us, more beautiful than the moon, a
moon, a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives-- perhaps a meaning to us...

"O, a meaning!
over us on these silent beaches the bright earth,
presence among us."

Note: This poem commemorating the first moonwalk appeared on the
front page of "The New York Times" on July 21, 1969.

Om Santih! Peace! - J. K. Mohana Rao

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