Olivia Payne
Buzz Aldrin Took Communion on the Moon
Yuri Gagarin is supposed to have said
That he saw no God in space.
Not in the curve of the earth
Nor in all the colours
He felt compelled to record
For us.
He didn’t but if he did
He should have said
That there was no God yet –
But why be pedantic
With the non-said words
Of a long-dead man
Who as it was
Died too young
And too hard
Without God or mercy
‘Without fuss and
With love’?
Because God came to space
and its spacemen later
(To spacewomen ever?)
When Buzz Aldrin
Took God to the moon
For the first time
In his most portable potable form:
A mirror – thin white round flesh.
A tupperware held him
And a chalice received him
The wineblood making its way
Against gravity
Past teeth and tongue
Into the heart
Of the astronaut
As he mumbled non-prayers
Lower than lying Peter fearing
The Romans of NASA.
Where there are only one set
Of footprints in the moondust there
Is where Neil Armstrong
Kangaroo-hopped while
Michael Collins watched
From the ship’s window.
The Presbyterian God is on the moon,
And we cannot get him down.
We haven’t visited since 1972
And he looks in envy at Mars,
Straining his ears to hear
Will.i.am amongst the stars.
He sits on the rock
Mocked by a whole pantheon,
By mythological bit-parts
Flying there before him.
He thinks Jupiter should be
Renamed Yehovah
And Mercury God
And Venus God 2
And Earth – well, Earth is Earth his Earth –
And maybe Pluto can be
The Holy Ghost
Because who knows what’s happening there.
He thinks of men, monsters and how
Mary Very Eagerly Mothered Jesus
Since Unique Nativity –
Perhaps his creating days are over.
His old works are cracking and
His castoffs carry him
As if he didn’t know the way
And make the roads.
Why do we build our own signs
When he put the curve in the earth
And the colours in the world
And the moon in the sky
For us to find.
But once found
Once again on the hunt
To kill the universe piecemeal,
To take it as a prize, and not a gift.
The holding cup made it back to earth
It made it back to a church
Whilst what it held was
Left behind,
Alone as ever
He was.
That he saw no God in space.
Not in the curve of the earth
Nor in all the colours
He felt compelled to record
For us.
He didn’t but if he did
He should have said
That there was no God yet –
But why be pedantic
With the non-said words
Of a long-dead man
Who as it was
Died too young
And too hard
Without God or mercy
‘Without fuss and
With love’?
Because God came to space
and its spacemen later
(To spacewomen ever?)
When Buzz Aldrin
Took God to the moon
For the first time
In his most portable potable form:
A mirror – thin white round flesh.
A tupperware held him
And a chalice received him
The wineblood making its way
Against gravity
Past teeth and tongue
Into the heart
Of the astronaut
As he mumbled non-prayers
Lower than lying Peter fearing
The Romans of NASA.
Where there are only one set
Of footprints in the moondust there
Is where Neil Armstrong
Kangaroo-hopped while
Michael Collins watched
From the ship’s window.
The Presbyterian God is on the moon,
And we cannot get him down.
We haven’t visited since 1972
And he looks in envy at Mars,
Straining his ears to hear
Will.i.am amongst the stars.
He sits on the rock
Mocked by a whole pantheon,
By mythological bit-parts
Flying there before him.
He thinks Jupiter should be
Renamed Yehovah
And Mercury God
And Venus God 2
And Earth – well, Earth is Earth his Earth –
And maybe Pluto can be
The Holy Ghost
Because who knows what’s happening there.
He thinks of men, monsters and how
Mary Very Eagerly Mothered Jesus
Since Unique Nativity –
Perhaps his creating days are over.
His old works are cracking and
His castoffs carry him
As if he didn’t know the way
And make the roads.
Why do we build our own signs
When he put the curve in the earth
And the colours in the world
And the moon in the sky
For us to find.
But once found
Once again on the hunt
To kill the universe piecemeal,
To take it as a prize, and not a gift.
The holding cup made it back to earth
It made it back to a church
Whilst what it held was
Left behind,
Alone as ever
He was.
Olivia Payne is a librarian working in London. She's an alumni of the Faber Academy and proud member of the Write Like a Grrrl community. She's previously had work published or forthcoming in places including Uncharted, The Amphibian Literary Journal, Ellipsis Zine, Corporeal, Alphabet Box, Sonder Magazine, and the Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.