Shoulders

--music and lyrics copyright (C) 1987 by Ernest Clark


!lj  1st draft:  1/27/87
!lj  2nd draft:  3/28/87
!lj  3rd draft:  11/6/87

I walked in the hills looking down on the starport
Never once looking up, though the night was quite clear;
For of every hundred proud ships lifting yonder
Eight and a fraction are not seen again.
   Long had I known that naked statistic,
   Yet fear weighed that night at belly and gaze.
   My first 'prentice flight would depart the next morning,
   And the thought had sunk in that we might not return.


Out from the night came the whisper of music
And words of defiance on chords of the storm.
A man with a twelve-string sang words from my childhood.
I sat on a rock and I joined in the song.
   We sang then of ladies, of heroes and villains,
   The juice of the barley, of two foggy dews,
   Of battles and ballads, ditties and duties,
   And poppies yet growing on far Flanders Field.


I spoke of my youth, the joy and the wonder,
The hunger to fly that put me where I was,
The study, the training, and how, in a panic,
I'd lost all my answers for why to go on.
   Think, the man said, of all come before us,
   Whose search for tomorrow we sing here tonight,
   Where we have been tells us why to continue,
   For the future and past join together today.


The stars glittered high, though the graying horizon
And Morning Star promised that sunrise was near.
The starships below us stood loaded and ready;
I left for mine and the captain for his.
   So sing out the songs to help us remember
   The deeds that endure when their doers are dust,
   Giants whose shoulders we stand on, reminding
   Us, whose are the shoulders our children will need.