As We Imagined It
High, Higher, Highest
by Samuel Hazo
Viewed from space, the world’s
impersonal.
France appears,
but no Frenchmen.
Then Germany,
without one German.
Regardless,
the richest man on earth
pays three hundred thousand
for a ten-minute flight by rocket
at three thousand miles per hour
to see everything below
from sixty-two miles straight up.
He’s making business plans
for space, beginning with Mars
and the moon.
There’s ample
precedent to show how profit
motivates.
After we mapped
the earth as we imagined it,
we matched what we imagined
with the world as it would look
when photographed from space.
We did the same with rivers,
lakes and seas.
We kept
the original names unchanged
for everything we saw
as far as we could fly.
From seashores to the stratosphere
the world was seen as property
that men could bargain for and buy.
We see it now the same
while profiteers debate how best
to advertise and sell the sky.
Copyright © 2022 by Samuel Hazo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2022
Should I comment at all on this poem? The language speaks eloquently of the dark side of unrestrained capitalism, the corrupting effect of unbounded avarice. Also, perhaps more fundamental is the allusion to the power of our imagination. Homo Sapiens, the language enabled mammal, creates the world in the image of their imaginations. We match the world with what we imagine. The world seen as property.
Should we not be mindful of the stories that we tell one another?
