The Changing Of The Guard Poem by David Lewis Paget

They had briefed us out by Sirius
Before the stellar war
When the Rogons and Teresans
Blasted atoms at the core;
And the by-station called Sargon was
Left glowing in the night
As a lesson to us Lidyans:
‘Defy us - and we fight! '

It was known among the planets
Scattered twenty parsecs wide,
That the distant planet Akron
Was abysmal in its pride,
Our infiltrators were Germals,
And they told us, without doubt,
That the scientists on Akron
Were about to blast them out!

They had built some great contrivance
In a country known as France,
Blasting protons at each other
Just to see if they could dance,
But the chance of anti-matter being
Spawned is our concern,
We could travel there to stop them,
Or just watch their planet burn.

They're like children in a playpen
Thinking everything is fine,
And they nod and smile at danger
Like a strange but new-laid wine,
But they have no understanding
When they try to act like God,
That creating anti-matter would
Destroy the earth they trod.

And the blast would take their planet,
And the blast would take their moon,
It would spread out in its violence for
One single afternoon,
It could gobble up the planets
That revolved around their sun,
And feeding on the solar rays
Might take out everyone!

We turned our battle-fleet to cruise
On through the universe,
Engaged the ion drive and set
The warp to speed our force,
We knew we had to navigate
Out through the Hellyan Maze
And that some would never make it,
Though our years would pass as days!

It must be two thousand years since we
Had visited them last,
Found the people raw and primitive,
No sense of peace, nor class,
So we trained a City State the use
Of armies, skilled and hard,
And we left them there, the Romans
As the one Praetorian Guard!

But the Germals lived beside them
And they measured every move,
Would report at each millennium
If things did not improve,
Then they built this great Collider
With their puny science skills,
And they laughed at the doomsayers, said:
‘It's ignorance that kills! '

So we're coasting in there slowly now
And through the Milky Way,
A thousand nuclear battlecraft,
There's not much more to say;
We must, before their folly
Leaves them permanently scarred
Make our way to planet Akron
For the Changing of the Guard!

25 March 2012