— Greetings Christmas 1962 by Robert Frost
With what unbroken spirit naïve science
Keeps hurling our Promethean defiance
From this atomic ball of rotting rock
At the Divine Safe’s combination lock.
In our defiance we are still defied.
But have not I, as prophet, prophesied:
Sick of our circling round and round the sun
Something about the trouble will be done.
Now that we’ve found the secret out of weight,
So we can cancel it however great.
Ah, what avail our lofty engineers
If we can’t take the planet by the ears,
Or by the poles or simply by the scruff,
And saying simply we have had enough
Of routine and monotony on earth,
Where nothing’s going on but death and birth.
And man’s of such a limited longevity,
Now in the confidence of new-found levity
(Our gravity has been our major curse)
We’ll cast off hawser for the universe
Taking along the whole race for a ride
(Have I not prophesied and prophesied?)
All voting viva voce where to go,
The noisier because they hardly know
Whether to seek a scientific sky
Or wait and go to Heaven when they die,
In other words to wager their reliance
On plain religion or religious science.
They need to crash the puzzle of their lot
As Alexander crashed the Gordian knot,
Or as we crashed the barrier of sound
To beat the very world’s speed going round.
Yet what a charming earnest world it is,
So modest we can hardly hear it whizz,
Spinning as well as running on a course
It seems too bad to steer it off by force.
New York: Spiral Press1962 and
Poetry (October/November 1962), p. 41
