They're Launching a Poem-less Library to the Moon
        (a reconstructed version of Whitman's "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life")

        A private space exploration company is working "to send a microfiche library to the
        moon in 2020 .... It will include Wikipedia and the Rosetta Project."
        — excerpt from a news story in Poets & Writers on May 17, 20l8

As I wend to the shore I know not
where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,

I list to the dirge, the voice of men and women wreck'd —
amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me —

aware now that the sediment stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.
As I ebb'd with the ocean of life, pointing in silence to these songs,

oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
that before all my arrogant poems

the real Me stands yet untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd.
Me and mine, little corpses.

You up there walking or sitting,
whoever you are.

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Copyright © 2019 Liz Chang All rights reserved
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Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission