Andrew Darlington - A Bouquet of (Neu)Roses: An Experiment with Time and Precognitive Dreaming*

how wonderful it must be

on Mars tonight,

I mean now, at 02:15...

through bursts of silence

I feel sciences that

as yet have no name,

I feel them through

the pulses of my

nervous system...

from here, I can smell

orchids on Venus, and

dream photographs of

ultimate strange devices

rising from the wells

of buried cities, hear

the shadow prowlers

of the singing void

and sense the

enchanted sleepers

in their metal moon...

I get this far

and my visions fail,

but how wonderful to be

on Syrtis Major tonight

while they invent songs

that resemble fragments

of darkness, that smell

of gasoline

and napalm...

and dream

that tomorrow

we’ll watch the

snowfall on Saturn...


*With two lines sampled from The Shape of Further Things by Brian Aldiss, 1970.