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.