July 21st, 1969, the day after the historic Apollo moon landing, The New York Times printed a poem by Archibald MacLeish on the front page; the only time a poem has ever graced the cover. The editor felt poetry was the only way to adequately describe that moment in history. In this week's Poetry Friday segment, Kevin Schindler, historian at Flagstaff's Lowell Observatory, reads Archibald MacLeish's Voyage to the Moon.
KS: The reason I chose this poem is because it really speaks to the magnitude of the achievement of going to the moon. In fact, I got this from the front page of the New York Times from July 21st, 1969, one of the most iconic front pages in the history of newspapers. The whole front page…it tops off with ‘MEN WALK ON MOON: ASTRONAUTS LAND ON PLAIN; COLLECT ROCKS, PLANT FLAG’. The whole front page is about the moon, but in the lower left, it’s not just the story, but this poem by Archibald MacLeish. And the editor explained that when they were putting together this front cover, they didn’t think they could put in words what this meant to go to the moon. So, let’s find a poet who can maybe express the thoughts that all of us are feeling. And so they talked to Archibald MacLeish who was at Harvard and a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He wrote this Voyage to the Moon poem specifically for this.
Today, I’m going to read Voyage to the Moon, by Archibald MacLeish:
Presence among us,
wanderer in the skies,
dazzle of silver in our leaves and on our
waters silver,
O
silver evasion in our farthest thought–
“the visiting moon” . . . “the glimpses of the moon” . . .
and we have touched you!
From the first of time,
before the first of time, before the
first men tasted time, we thought of you.
You were a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives–perhaps
a meaning to us…
Now
our hands have touched you in your depth of night.
Three days and three nights we journeyed,
steered by farthest stars, climbed outward,
crossed the invisible tide-rip where the floating dust
falls one way or the other in the void between,
followed that other down, encountered
cold, faced death–unfathomable emptiness . . .
Then, the fourth day evening, we descended,
made fast, set foot at dawn upon your beaches,
sifted between our fingers your cold sand.
We stand here in the dusk, the cold, the silence . . .
and here, as at the first of time, we lift our heads.
Over us, more beautiful than the moon, a
moon, a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives–perhaps
a meaning to us . . .
O, a meaning!
over us on these silent beaches the bright earth,
presence among us.
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
