Poem by Ray Bradbury

[Lazarus Short]

This may be off-topic, but the poem is a good summation of Bradbury's career as a writer, and it may surprise some to learn that he was a Christian.  I find it moving even if it is theologically questionable...

If Only We Had Taller Been
-Ray Bradbury


The fence we walked between the years
Did balance us serene
It was a place half in the sky where
In the green of leaf and promising of peach
We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky
If we could reach and touch, we said,
'Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead

We ached and almost touched that stuff;
Our reach was never quite enough.
If only we had taller been
And touched God's cuff, His hem,
We would not have to go with them
Who've gone before,
Who, short as us, stood as they could stand
And hoped by stretching tall that they might keep their land
Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.
But they, like us, were standing in a hole

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measured out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam's finger forth
As on the Sistine Ceiling,
And God's hand come down the other way
To measure man and find him Good
And Gift him with Forever's Day?
I work for that

Short man, Large dream
I send my rockets forth between my ears
Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:
We've reached Alpha Centauri!
We're tall, O God, we're tall!

[Lazarus Short]

After meditating on this poem some more, I realise that its theology is the works variety - if we can only manage to make it to the stars, then God will bless us.  Pretty package though, and good poetry as poetry goes.

[eaglesway]

Not sure it isnt a little more whimsical than that. The recognition that we ought to work for good is not always based in works theology. God created and he looked at what he had done and saw that it was good. I see mr Bradbury mainly just expressing two things in th poem. A desire to experience the touch of God and the desire to feel like he had accomplished something "good".

Thanks for posting the poem.

[Lazarus Short]

I now recall a Bradbury short story in which two spacemen find out that He had just been there, on this new (to them) planet.  One of them takes off, stating that he will find Him somewhere, at the right time, before His death.  The other stays behind, and is told to come on into town, for He is waiting for him.  Here, works was put to ridicule.