Forgotten Ground Regained

Spacepoem 3: Off Course

the golden flood the weightless seat the cabin song the pitch black the growing beard the floating crumb the shining rendezvous the orbit wisecrack the hot spacesuit the smuggled mouth-organ the imaginary somersault the visionary sunrise the turning continents the space debris the golden lifeline the space walk the crawling deltas the camera moon the pitch velvet the rough sleep the crackling headphone the space silence the turning earth the lifeline continents the cabin sunrise the hot flood the shining spacesuit the growing moon
  • the crackling somersault the smuggled orbit the rough moon the visionary rendezvous the weightless headphone the cabin debris the floating lifeline the pitch sleep the crawling camera the turning silence the space crumb the crackling beard the orbit mouth-organ the floating song.
Note from the editor:
In this poem, Edwin Morgan is playing with the way in which half-lines separated by a caesura (as in Old English poetry) can be used to paint a picture by cataloging the details of a list. But he doesn't bother throwing in the alliteration that would make this poem into true alliterative verse.
Copyright © Estate of Edwin Morgan, 1969 This poem was first published in The Frontier of Going and reprinted in The Collected Poetry of Edwin Morgan. It is reprinted with the permission of Carcanet Press.
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