Recognizing that their coverage of the first lunar landing was not mere news but History, the New York Times sought to add a special dignity to their front page, under the gigantic headline “MEN WALK ON MOON.” To fill this need the editors turned to poet Archibald MacLeish.
It was from the perspective of mankind, not of Neil and Buzz in particular, that MacLeish celebrates setting foot at dawn upon the lunar beaches. The astronauts, though heroes, were only our emissaries. And the engineers, whose marvelous feats MacLeish does not discount, go unmentioned. Instead, MacLeish emphasizes the we and the us: “You were a wonder to us… we journeyed… we touched you!,” with that we stretching back to include every member of the human family throughout our history.
Within the cadet community, we talk of the first lunar landing mostly within the stovepipe of aerospace education, but there’s a leadership lesson here as well. MacLeish shows that it was the dreamers and poets who sent us to the moon. Before the aerospace wizards do their heroic work, dreamers give us a vision.
V O Y A G E T O T H E M O O N
by Archibald MacLeish
PRESENCE among us,
wanderer in our skies,
dazzle of silver in our leaves and on our
waters silver,
O
Silver evasion in our farthest thought –
“the visiting moon” . . . “the glimpses of the moon”
and we have touched you!
From the first of time,
before the first of time, before the
first men tasted time, we thought of you.
You were a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives – perhaps
a meaning to us . . .
Now
our hands have touched you in your depth of night.
Three days and three nights we journeyed,
steered by farthest stars, climbed outward,
crossed the invisible tide-rip where the floating dust
falls one way or the other in the void between,
followed that other down, encountered
cold, faced death – unfathomable emptiness . . .
Then, the fourth day evening, we descended,
made fast, set foot at dawn upon your beaches,
sifted between our fingers your cold sand.
We stand here in the dusk, the cold, the silence . . .
and here, as at the first of time, we lift our heads.
Over us, more beautiful than the moon, a
moon, a wonder to us, unattainable,
a longing past the reach of longing,
a light beyond our light, our lives – perhaps
a meaning to us . . .
O, a meaning!
over us on these silent beaches the bright
earth,
presence among us.
[from NY Times, 21 July 1969]
Comments
One of our squadron cadets is either the niece or grand-niece (not sure) of Neil Armstrong. This is C/CMsgt Ethan Crombie of the River City Composite Squadron (MO-084)