The Doomed Spaceman

I remember one winter-night meadow
Of sky-black grass
That lay behind my childhood window
Of pearly glass
When I learned what it was to be lonely.
Packed off to bed
And lit by a glimmer that wanly
The frostfall shed.

The pane wiped clear, my crying over,
Darkness would yield
Its long cluster of summer-white clover
In a vast field:
Sleepless I stared for yearning hours,
And I began
Wanting to wander those infinite flowers
When a grown man.

And now I am lost in the heavens,
My meanderings
Further immeasurably flung than Saturn's
Exquisite rings
Into space that's unutterably lovely
With misted light
And every dusk is a dawn and every
Day is as night.

Straight my broken instruments steer:
I have no choice
But to bear silence in which I can hear
No human voice
Save mine at the capsule's clear window
No dandelion Sun in no meadow
Of day-blue grass.

Weightless, helpless, I'm locked on a track
I can't reverse:
For one glimpse of home, I would give back
The Universe.
Constellation by constellation
Like baby's breath
I journey through, my destination
Nowhere but Death.