After reading Baudelaire's L'Albatros

in 1978, on a beach in Brittany,
a child pokes with his stick
the remains of an albatross
strangled in crude oil
from the foundering tanker,
The Amoco Cadiz.

When a poet fails at takeoff,
his imagination aborts, and
gravity leaves him hanging
from the launching scaffold

while rockets leak fuel and
computers malfunction,
the tv audience scowls
and Mission Control quickly
breaks off the countdown.

 

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