On their world, too, it grew: blue lotus
Thrust up from the fertile mud
Of memory & myth, from pools
That caught the morning.
When we came,
They welcomed us, but understood
We were not gods, although star-fallen,
Tall & strange.
Our heads were ours,
Not ibises or cats or cattle,
Not jackals or that crop-eared horror
Who haunted deserts.
The breath of chaos
Howled there like a solar wind
Too strong to ride, too wild to trust:
They clung instead to order.
Balance
Built their lives of stone & gold
Imperishable, pyramidal,
Petrified.
We understood
Perhaps a hundredth of their reasons,
But dreamed the rest one lotus night
Tinged blue with déjà vu.
Next morning,
Tall & strange & fallen from
Our airless desert seared by stars,
We launched— & felt the balance tremble.