The Final Frontier

[Minnow]

The Final Frontier

It will never be the same, Yuri.

That very same step you took;
The very same distance that you looked;
In fifty years, none have ever come close
To what you have done; what you have seen.

Plenty have flown, plenty have left,
But never like you.
Never has any man felt your stars;
Not as you once did.

Now filled with earthly details,
Nations light up the night.
Fear and war and fire, it consumes us all.
And who is left to light up the sky?

It will never be the same, Yuri.

They can’t understand you anymore.
What could concern us up there?
Nobody feels as you did, Yuri.
Man has no need for pioneers.

The world has turned; life has gone on.
And some—but very few—try to find you,
But they have fallen short,
Content with chasing your shadow.

Whatever happened to us, Yuri?
How could humanity lose its hope, its spirit,
Its drive to push out and explore,
Our call to adventure?

And there’s nothing we couldn’t do to change.
What do we have to fear, but ourselves?
So how can we be stopped?
If we only acted as one.

In time, of course, science will march on,
And perhaps man will reach beyond your skies
But what worth could it have, what love could it bring?
What of it, if they couldn’t find you?

It will never be the same, Yuri.

__________________________________

Wrote it for school. Comments?
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[departuresong]

I think it's very well-done technically. I just wish I had some semblance of an idea about what the subject actually is. I think you're being a bit too cryptic with your language.

 

[Minnow]

I was worried about it being a little too vague, especially because I tend to do that a lot. If I were to rewrite it or revise it, which I may, then I'd tone down the crypticness a bit.

It's about space travel. The narrator is addressing Yuri Gagarin, lamenting about how we seem to have lost the initial adventurous spark of space exploration, and how he thinks people should be less concerned about earthly matters and turn towards the stars instead.