Round Trip

The monitors flicker, turn blue and then black.
“They’ve wiped out the cameras, with that last attack!”
The fury and clamor of battles resound.
“It’s not just the video! All comms are down!”
Life on Earth Station has become intense,
the damage extensive since fighting commenced.
Now factions that once plotted, openly quarrel.
With new-Earth’s discovery, there’ll be no withdrawal.

The starship was broken, ’twas battered and beat.
It was ancient, a relic, the last of the fleet.
None of the Voyageurs remembered a time,
before Earth Station, the last of its line.
All histories preceding their days on the ship,
were shadows and echoes from before the trip.
The first generation, and then evermore,
have faded from memory, reduced to mere lore.

That husk of a planet they once had called home
was now an abstraction from some long ago.
Some said, “They despoiled it!” Others claimed, “They just left,
on a trek of discovery.” (How soon we forget!)
Now if you’ll recall there were scuffles afoot,
(for some Voyageurs felt that they’d been overlooked.)
Not all would step foot on the planet they’d picked,
but instead find Earth Station their funeral crypt.

No place for them on this new world beyond.
By lots, fairly chosen, yet they’d not be calmed.
Uprisings began to rise up on the ship,
First looting, then shootings, then the captain lost grip.
These Voyageurs bickered and schemed ‘mongst themselves,
All the governing agents had once too rebelled.
They argued that they would do better than those,
who had come before them. (The ones they deposed!)

As pilots board shuttles to prepare for descent,
a message rings out, to mark the event.
“My greetings to all,” says a man on the screen,
a face from a time and a place long unseen.
“If you’re seeing this video, success you have had,
we left Earth behind us when things got too bad.
Warring, consuming, never looking ahead,
we named it as progress, ’twas ruin, instead.”

“So now we climb into this vast new starship,
in hopes of a new life, our children to give.
We’ll learn from our failures on Earth here today,
we’ll surely do better and find a new way.
’Tis true that I leave here with blood on my hands,
some sacrifice must needs be part of our plans.
We leave our dear planet, we owe such a debt,
on a ship named Earth Station, lest we forget.”

“And, lo, now behold, a new world you have claimed,
a place where our species will not be constrained.
A new Earth to subdue with the toil of your hand.
A solution! A victory! A new home for man!
Rise up from the ashes we’ve left here today.
Remember these words as you go on your way:
Take history as teacher, and kneel at her feet,
knowing lessons ignored, are doomed to repeat.”