VOYAGER
When I behold the charm
of evening skies […]
knowing that this galaxy of ours
is one of multitudes
in what we call the heavens,
it troubles me. It troubles me.
—President Jimmy Carter, from his poem “Considering the Void”
Jimmy Carter died and is on his way
to rock and roll heaven, and a Voyager
spacecraft is over fifteen billion miles
from us, but I don’t know which
is harder to get to. not all presidents
go to heaven, and so far Jimmy Carter
is the only president in space,
by way of a letter, imprinted on
a Golden Record, to someones or
somethings unknown. this message
will live incomprehensibly longer
than you. in five hundred and six
thousand years, or in ninety million
three hundred thousand years, or in
seven billion four hundred million
years, more or less, some beings
will find a Voyager with that Golden
Record still attached. our Earth will be
a crumb of burnt toast. he says
We are attempting to survive our time
so we may live into yours.
most of us can only wish to have
cosmic significance. I consider the void,
I consider America, and I would like
to blast our failures into space,
but Jimmy Carter sent good will,
because only some of us can see
a burden as a blessing. Jimmy Carter
died but is powered by the sun
and by God, so he is still surviving
his time. if you cracked the peanut
shell of his heart open,
you’d find an interstellar geode,
a solar system inside. he wanted us,
too, to carry that vast, hard love.
do you know, do you know
how lucky we are to have sent
the best of us into the stars?
—from Poets Respond
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Jean Prokott: “America mourns the loss of President Jimmy Carter and celebrates one hell of a life lived. I’ve been reading his poetry this week and came upon this quote: ‘being president is as difficult as writing the perfect poem.’ If only all leaders were poets.” (web)
