Against Science Fiction
They say one day they’ll come and find
us, them in their sleek, gleaming sputniks;
us stranded on our beautiful, lost
rock that’s somewhere in the outskirts,
not wanting to know, trying
to shoot them down
with our quaint, old-fashioned guns.
All the years that we have sat here,
rained on by brief meteorites
if we’re lucky, and we think so,
gazing lonely at a vacuum,
all that bleak, dark, endless madness
(is it thus or do we just see
reflections of ourselves in it),
did we spend them in hope or fear
or would we rather see as intruders
those who might represent some wisdom
that we’ve not arrived at yet.
Is it not vain, and self-regarding,
to think that each flicker of light
that we suppose we might have seen
is a sign of their arrival.
But, if it was (and we will remain
both watchful and credulous),
should we not be so
in love with the quite unlikely,
knowing life is chemistry,
and only that. But if they’ve found
their way here to us, who haven’t yet
travelled beyond the moon,
they’re not Gods
but they must be cleverer than we could know
and obviously speak English.