November 23, 2014Unsent Letter from Philae, Comet 67P
In the meantime, the Rosetta orbiter is continuing to look for Philae’s final landing spot, and it will seek out transmissions from the lander every day when the two are within line-of-sight.
To approximate calligraphically the three-hundred million miles
I traveled between your lungs to arrive so far from the sun, one
should sit before an empty jar of ink and imagine a distant white
rectangle like a field of snow not a single hoof or wheel
has impressed. It was not planned but of course I stopped near
a cliff, of course there was less charge than they’d hoped, and
there would never be enough time. If it was cold, I was calibrated
to say it but not feel it. If it was lonely, I did not have a word
to say so. Together we carried twenty-one instruments. Together
we stepped out over the shoulder of South America into layers
of distance, and I wanted to tell them so many things even while
not one of my instruments was a heart. We had no inkling of so
many things: the symmetry of a cat’s stripes, morning glories still
in November, how patiently one of them waited for another to feel
what she felt. I knew what we knew, gravitational ellipses, and then
only what I could touch: frozen dust, methane, carbon dioxide,
ammonia, and somewhere farther than possible a song I couldn’t
yet hear that would make this new home of mine turn to something
akin to light, from where they stood. If it was a success, I wasn’t
the one to succeed. If it was cold … The picture I snapped of you as
we parted looked to some like a rock concert, no pun intended,
as if I were not me at all but one of billions. As if I were surrounded
by everyone who might hold me, were reality different from this.
from Poets Respond