511 - Carl Sagan Recommends Escape-Flight to Mars

Carl Sagan Recommends Escape-Flight to Mars
By Harold McCurdy

I rise from troubled sleep
Into a gloomy day
Relieved by the plaintive cheep
Of a whitethroat far away.

At breakfast, the radio
Brings me voices singing
The mingled joy and woe
Of Hildegard von Bingen.

The Hortus deliciarum
Of Herrad comes to mind,
And the long descent from the Garden
To this day dark and blind.

And shall now Hildegard
Deconstruct high tech
And force us to discard
Walt Disney and Star Trek?

No, no, our TV screens
Are safe from pious attack,
Commerce and the machines
Prevent us from turning back.

"Forward!" the scientists cry,
"Earth drowns in polluted air,
But Mars is clean and dry
And no one is dying there."

A frequent contributor to THEOLOGY TODAY, Harold McCurdy is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has published six volumes of poetry.