SCIENCE FICTION

Death is by burning, on this planet; burning
alive before it is too late; and birth
is common, towards the end - there is no mourning,
for there is no cold interval: first breath
and last, being ardent and vermilion,
flowering and falling in voluntary ash,
are like an heirloom, like the heirloom sun:
he is Their god; They eat his fiery flesh.

But he is not my sun - a different colour,
and vast and bad.  And shall such things be done
where Liberty brings Progress and The Dollar?
I shout, and reach for my atomic gun.
Besides, They have too odd a shape to live;
a complex language; no respect.  And creatures
who look at everything we want to give,
and look away, must have disloyal natures.

They have no passions: full freshwater seas,
and mauve and orange fields; caverns and woods
upon the spiring mountains - among these 
Their meetings are angelic solitudes,
Their only food the wisdom and the fire;
dead-petalled light Their shelter and Their clothing.
The wisdom is the fire: star-Eden where
infinite apples burn on boughs of Nothing.

Why do my fingers freeze upon the blaster
as if (not I, for I am loyal) They
rebelled by wonder?  May we not die faster,
dying by dark and cold, than those we slay?
But I am still a man: They have no rockets,
no private counterprise; They think and need
nothing that comes in small transparent packets:
kill Them, kill all Their foul inhuman breed!