Far from garden haunts and field smells,
Pats and caresses of hands, from all your intimate earthiness,
You were hurled beyond earth’s orbit, into scentless space.
The tool of science, plaything for cold minds
Plotting hubristic conquest of their vacant heavens.
Your heart which once leapt at known voices, bones,
Potential mates, sight of cats, now geared to graphs ;
Your bright instincts strapped, wrenched from nature’s course
To this unnatural tryst.
Surely he on the timeless cross
(Hands outstretched in grief over Belsen and Belfast)
Holds some warm comer of compassion
For the dumb derelictions, outraged offshoots of the great sixth day,
All beasts cooped and cowed, and this unwitting astronaut
Enduring masterless, mateless, and in unintelligible loneliness
The impersonal vivisection of the skies.
