I was entertained by voyagers

1

Abducted by aliens, some would say, but
entertained, I’d call it. Their ‘ship’
was not so much a saucer, more
a flying casserole. They took me in,
and sat me down, gave me a little bracelet,
a copper wrist-band that received their speech,
translated it to mine, and mine to theirs.

Well, yes, I was naive, I took a risk,
but neither more nor less than if I’d joined
a group of Malagasy or Chinese; should I assume
they’d all be killers or enslavers? People
from across whatever sea, are what they are.

They’re not six-armed, or green. They’re not
intelligent amphibians, or chickens. It’s the apes
that crack it, everywhere it seems.

They’re very pale, and have big ears
- not Mickey Mouse or even Mr Spock,
but noticeably big. Enough for some
to label them the Luggies or the Shells
and shove them in a mental holding-camp.

I heard some youth, some higher-level shooter
who had been zapping aliens all night,
away from his console for a pack of fags,
had seen a voyager and shot at him and missed.

2

They gave me a bowl of fruit like lychees,
and a sweet drink, and talked and listened.

So much to say, much more to learn. I have to
write it, write it all, leave nothing out. But I must
begin with this: for though we talked about our wars,
our gods, our science and theirs, our arts and theirs,
it was the ‘showing’ of their homeworld (more
than ‘film’, I was surrounded with it, I was there)
that got me going. I regret what afterwards I said,
but what they said then, that sobered me,

I have since accepted. Fired up with the romance
of space, and sci-fi odysseys, I got lyrical. ‘I look

at the night sky’, I said. ‘I see the fires. There are worlds
too close to the fire, and worlds too far away.
But there are worlds in just the proper place,
their years three-fifty to three-eighty days,
their atmosphere as warm as a hatching egg.

In time we will set sail, and cross the archipelago.
Some islands there are bleak, no castaway,
no palm tree, but others - we shall visit them,
and we will breathe there, talk and listen’.

But will you go, a voyager said,
for blood and metals? Your death-doers,
your kill-makers, will go. The notion
translated strangely, as if they had
no word for it. Another said:

Do not go there. By all means go
to the dead Moon, dead Mars, but
do not go where there is other life.

You do not know
how to live with others.