Pioneer 10 Poetry

For me, some of the most moving responses to the message are the works of art and poetry that it evoked. Mr. 'Aim Morhardt is a painter of water colors of the desert and sierras who lives in Bishop, California, where, perhaps not coincidentally, the giant Goldstone tracking station, which commands Pioneer 10, is located. Mr. Morhardt's poem follows:

Pioneer 10: The Golden Messenger.
The dragon prows that cruised the northern seas,
Questing adventure with the fighting clan;
The gallant mermaid bows blown down the breeze
On barquentine and slim-hulled merchantman;
All the discoverers of unknown lands
Gone in this winged age where naught remains
Of new strange treasure on some foreign strand,
So well-known earth, such charted routes and lanes.
Now the new figurehead of man appears,
Facing the vast immeasurable unknown,
Naked, star-sped, beyond the call of years,
Hand in hand, outward bound, and so alone.
Go, tiny messenger of our your race,
Touch, if you can, harbor in some far place.

Mr. Arvid F. Sponberg, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, writes: "The voyage of Pioneer 10 – and the voyages of those like her – will have an effect that poets, painters and musicians will not long ignore. The existence of the idea of Pioneer 10 is proof of this. The scientific mission of course is of incalculable value and interest, but the idea of the journey is of even greater imaginative value. Pioneer 10 brings closer the day when artists must confront man's new voyage as experience and not fantasy."

Mr. Sponberg composed for us a poem in sonnet form:

New Odyssey
Away, afar, beyond, bereft of kin,
Wayward, wandering, far ranging vagabonds,
Yearning, stardrawn, the Pioneers sweep on,
Outward bound, adrift on the solar wind.
A man, a woman, orphans of warm earth
Or splendid voyageurs with golden sails,
Or gypsies roaming ancient stellar trails,
A caravan in quest of celestial berth.
If, deep within cold interstellar space,
Some fearful eye spies life on this raft,
Will it perceive the heart within our craft,
A pulsar pounding out the rhythms of peace?
A spirit's starburst pierces new frontiers;
An Odyssey is our home; let us praise Pioneers!

There is, of course, the possibility that the message on Pioneer 10 – invented by human beings but directed at creatures of a very different kind – may prove ultimately mysterious to them. We think not. We think we have written the message – except for the man and woman – in a universal language. The extraterrestrials cannot possibly understand English or Russian or Chinese or Esperanto, but they must share with us common mathematics and physics and astronomy. I believe that they will understand, with no very great effort, this message written in the galactic language: "Scientific."

Two poems inspired by the Pioneer 10 probe. Surely the first of many.