WORLD OF TOMORROW
Whereless in a sea of space,
how shall we reckon with the dead
whose graves we marked on a shifting land
and left at a distance travelled by light?
What pilot navigates our course
through a finite but expanding void
no almanac explains or chart defines?
Sun, stars, birds, nothing avails
since Phoenician and Viking passed
with cross-staff, astrolabe and compass
to bring us to shores we have left behind.
We are speeding our unborn young
to harbors no heard voice guides us toward,
no radar yet detects, no octant sights.
Now new dimensions of mind
extend the geometric skull
of Ptolemy and Euclid, of occult
priest and philosopher, to measure time
not by the sun's zenith at noon
or the moon's eclipse, but by spectra
through which we can identify time's white.
Past and present, both are blind
to the future, while the Sphinx waits
for another Oedipus. O waste
of sand and wind, swept by an airborne tide!
Shall we find a snakeless Eden
and with the apples unforbidden
begin our second exodus, from Paradise?
This first edition was completed in May 1964.
The poems were set in 14 pt. Centaur
by Mackenzie & Harris, Inc.
and printed by Bradley Brownell
in the shop of Van Riper & Thompson, Inc.
on Curtis Colophon text.
Bound by the Santa Barbara Bindery
Designed and illustrated by
Wayne Thompson
Van Riper & Thompson, Inc.
703 Anacapa Street
Santa Barbara, California
