Steve’s Shorts: A Singing Sadness…
[I just found another early short story…and it contains a poem! I won’t say when the story was written, but it has current relevance. It can be classified as shorts that are almost a speedo…but get rid of that image right now! Enjoy…]
A Singing Sadness
Copyright 2016, Steven M. Moore
Mila Park walked slowly to the lectern. She preferred to be out on a dig, but her sponsors thought this find was important. As the South American Combine prepared for war with the North African Union, tensions everywhere on Earth were high. At the cocktail hour, some Combine and Union scientists had been exchanging angry words. How peaceful it is on an archaeological site light-years away!
“The title of my lecture is boring. ‘Insights on the Archaeological Excavations in the 82 Eridani System’ is simply the title of a recent paper I wrote. I’ll now give it a subtitle: ‘How a Civilization Can Destroy Itself.’” There were some stirrings in the audience. Several conference attendees looked at each other. “The finds offer a lesson for humanity in these troubled times.”
She put up her first slide. There were several gasps from the audience now. “What you see is a temple littered with skeletons. We didn’t have to dig much to find them, of course, but the entrance to the temple was covered by rubble. A nuclear warhead hit only half a kilometer away. Most of the city’s inhabitants on the surface were vaporized, of course, but we believe that those in the temple died from starvation or radiation poisoning—it’s hard to tell which ailment would get them first because we don’t yet know enough about their physiology.”
She took a sip of water and put up another slide. “Here you see one of the many documents we found inside the temple. As you may already know, these were a sensitive people who left great works of art—paintings and sculptures and beautiful architecture—but they also had a literary tradition. It is sad that this search for beauty couldn’t stop the descent into the madness of self-annihilation. The many documents in the temple provided much more than a Rosetta stone for our time. The ideograms are complicated, so a massive effort using a lot of computer power was needed to translate them. But once we translated them, we developed a pretty good idea about this people’s culture and what went wrong.”
She began a long summary of their findings, including the history of greedy groups vying for control of the planet. “Are there any questions?”
“Could you go back to that first document?” said a woman in the first row. “I know nothing about their language, but it looks awfully short. What is it?”
“A poem by one of that people’s greatest poets. It’s hard to translate poetry well, but here’s what she says:
My soul awakens.
All about me the stars,
Like signposts up ahead,
Marching into the distant past
And even more distant future…
I see them strangely.
And yet the Universe is me
And I am one with it;
And my soul feels the thunder of a thousand suns
While I am the seeker and finder.
Could it be otherwise?
Not until a singing sadness
Erases it all
And I and my Universe are no more.
That’s it.”
Mila saw the tears glistening on the woman’s cheeks. The rest of the audience was silent.
“It says enough,” said the woman.
In the following weeks, a popular singer/songwriter used the poem as lyrics for a song that blew up the pop music charts around the world. Peace talks began between the South American Combine and the North African Union.
***
Aristocrats and Assassins. Detective Castilblanco and his wife go on vacation. They both see a wee bit too much of Europe, including a few royals who are kidnapped. Written before the Paris, Brussels, and Nice attacks, I don’t think anyone would say now that this is impossible. Maybe European security agencies should consider it a warning?
In libris libertas!
