One Crowded Hour

*One crowded hour of glorious life
 Is worth an age without a name…


for Cosmonaut Gagarin


Imagine if, that day in spring, April 1961,
you hadn't donned your uniform,
and focused your intense blue eyes
on heaven's yet-unconquered heights,
the realm of limitless desire.

Imagine if you hadn't made that journey
to the cosmodrome, to cross a threshold human-
kind had wondered at and gazed upon;
ascending to the launching pad, 
the gleaming shell of Vostok 1,
not knowing if the dream was wise,
if daring vision would suffice -   
prepared for sacrifice: your life,
unprecedented cosmic flight,
or immolation in the lonely skies.
What mattered was your soaring spirit -
words that, touching hearts, inspired.

Imagine if you hadn't braved
the long, dark tunnel of surmise,
challenging the frontiers of terrestrial,
familiar life - would we now be
like Ikaros, nostalgic wings internalised,
beating the bars like captive birds -
fledglings who will never fly?

In our isolated state, minds
in cryogenesis, universe contracting
to the comfort zone of what is known,
would we have repudiated dreams
of cosmic enterprise, closing our eyes
to galaxies so few of us could visualise,
where spirits rise like helium
and consciousness inhabits light?

You were the first to enter
the new dawn, a cosmic neophyte;
to risk the fiery birth-canal
from earth to yet-uncharted space,
and, reborn to the firmament,
become the one who found his name
inscribed along the Milky Way
like stepping-stones
for those to come…

Captivated by earth's halo,
you were able to describe
intensifying shades of sky -
azure through to indigo - auras
to which we aspire, air-and-water,
paradise, projections of infinity
and consummate desire…



Epigraph:"The Call", from a poem
by Thomas Mordaunt (1730-1809)

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
......Throughout the sensuous world proclaim,
 One crowded hour of glorious life
......Is worth an age without a name."