by James Lauve

Winner of the Margaret Weymouth Jackson Award in Creative Writing

What barren rock, what cruel, remorseless land

Is now the grave of my belovéd ship—

The fairest craft that sailed the celestial seas

Above, until that curséd ast’roid rammed 

Into her mighty hull and brought her down?

What lifeless planet do I stand upon?

For lifeless it is, no creature’s calling greets

My ears, nor e’en do moss or lichen feast

Upon the rubble of this mountainside. 

Though fair, this land’s as dead as any desert;

It’s ne’er seen any life but mine alone! 

My voice alone has ever graced these cliffs,

These stones have felt no other feet than mine.

This planet’s emptiness has pierced my soul

With boundless agony; I am alone!

Alas for my poor ship, alas for me!

For we are trapped here in this barren land,

And she has gone before in death while I,

I am doomed to live still longer here,

To slowly waste away until I starve.

How soon will life here be forever lost!

This world’s more dead than any ancient king,

For while those kings live on in their descendants,

And the human race has spread to every clime

And corner of sweet earth, this planet is

My doom, all life here dies with me.  Alas!  

My death the end of life, this world a tomb, 

And like a bridegroom called to war, who’s doomed

To ne’er return, I leave this empty world

With the faintest memories of fleeting joy!

This planet’s like a widowed youth indeed;

The breeze is fair to feel, nor hot nor cold,

A bubbling stream proclaims its tranquil bliss, 

And in the distance, I can see the sea.

And yet to me it is a madd’ning husk,

So fair to breathe and fair to see, but empty.

How like sweet earth is this forsaken rock,

If earth were dead, more dead than kings of old.

For out of those men’s deaths there came new life

As things too small to see began to gorge

Upon their flesh.  Yet in this barren place I – 

I am not alone!  Just as Ymir’s corpse

Was fashioned – so they said in ancient days – 

Into the world by Odin and his kin,

Who made his blood into the rolling seas,

His hair the trees, and mountains from his bones—

Just as, I say, the elder giant’s death

Had seeded earthly life in all its forms,

So too shall mine release upon this world

The life within my flesh, too small to see,

The microbes which abound upon sweet earth.

And for this end I do not have to wait

For death; for even on my skin – indeed

On every surface of my ship and body –

This hidden life is teeming as on earth.

My ship was not a tomb; it was a seed

That soon shall sprout into a mighty plant

To cover this world as snow on winter nights.

That fate is set in motion now; that most

Tenacious seed of life has sprouted here,

And no art which men possess could weed it out.

Yet here my purpose lies, here a task for me,

Some worthy way to spend my final days

And give myself a death I can abide:

I’ll spread this earthly life wherever I go

Across this newly-wakened Paradise.

Deucalion I’ll be, who with his wife

Survived the flood that killed all humankind.

Commanded by the gods, they picked up stones

To throw them as they walked; and where they fell

The stones turned into men and women both.

Deucalion I’ll be, for like that man

I’ll take these rocks, and make them by my touch

The seeds that fill this barren, empty land.

Now where to go?  For staying here is folly; 

The wreckage of my ship has surely planted

Life more firmly here than e’er could I.

I ought not climb the peak on which I’ve crashed,

For though I’d like to walk the mountainside,

And Ymir’s bones are rattling in death,

Yet life will grow but slowly in the heights—

There is no water there; the air is dry.

Shall I then follow the creek into the sea?

That’s where, they say, life started on sweet earth,

So surely there my task will not be vain.

And just as blood, they said in ancient days,

Contained a living being’s life and soul,

So too should Ymir’s blood be fertile ground

And bear the fruit of life abundantly.

There’s water, too, a stream that’s good to drink,

T’extend my life and bring me more success.

The sea, then, is my aim, where life will grow

And take new shapes sweet earth has never seen.

Perhaps, in time, a being like myself

Will blossom from these stones, and take its place

Among the cosmos as its father did.

For it would be a sort of son to me,

And be my lasting, living legacy

That’s far more real than that of kings of old.

For none of them could be Deucalion,

The father of a barren planet’s life.

What luck is mine to have so bless’d a death!

For though in time my name shall be forgot,

And slowly starving is my sorry fate, 

I drew from all life’s ends the greatest lot.

James Lauve is a junior studying Latin and history.