Survivors Poem by Pamela Ann Frances Crane

Spawned in a constellation
Deep in the heart of space
A wayward alien nation
Grew to a master race.

Trapped on a wasted planet,
Damned by a raging star,
They built their craft; but to man it
Took them a step too far.

They picked all the politicians,
The cream of the world’s elite,
Great scientists, skilled clinicians -
But nobody off the street.

They left the poor and the sickly
With barely a month’s supplies
And left for the stars too quickly
To see the shock in their eyes.

Silence came to the planet.
A billion souls had died.
Gone were the fools who ran it;
Now the survivors tried.

Gentle with plant and creature,
Braving the Polar sun,
They followed an ancient teacher
In treating all life as one.

Rain came back to the furrow,
Fruit returned to the tree;
New eyes blinked in the burrow,
New fins flashed in the sea.

The star in its violent cycle
Moved on to a blissful calm,
Promising men like Michael
Hope for a struggling farm.

Communities met and traded
And centuries had gone by.
Even the folklore faded
Of the great escape to the sky.

Heading for home one twilight
After his flocks were fed
Michael’s thoughts were of firelight,
A welcoming wife, and bed.

Nothing prepared him for drama,
The scream of metal in air,
And searing the eyes of the farmer
A light no human could bear.

Something the size of a nightmare
Exploded through field and grain;
Michael lay shaking in fright there,
His soul and body all pain.

How could he know what landed
Was full of women and men
Who, hopeless, lonely and stranded
In space, had come home again?

Time had warped on the voyage;
The ship crashed into an Earth
Struggling into the new age
Bringing itself to birth.

How could he know the wonders
That under the hull were sealed?
The plans, the dreams and the blunders
That ended in Michael’s field?

How could he hear the crying
Or know that before his eyes
The last of his kind were dying
Who conquered the earth and skies? ...

Their final act of destruction
The crater that was his farm,
Its years of scanty production
Aborted; destroyed its charm.

After the conflagration
Villagers came to stare
At the grave of an ancient nation
That nobody knew was there.

In time they gathered the metal
Strewn over Michael’s soil,
Learned how to work and fettle
For tool and girder and coil.

And metal became a token,
Contending came with the skill.
Ambition and fear were woken.
Their future awaits them still...