Endeavour Revealed, A belated poemster |
Endeavour Revealed, A belated poemster |
Oct 5 2011, 02:25 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
Hi All,
After a lengthy delay due to work being so busy these days (what with deep space missions and all), I finally got the chance to work on the poster for another of Stuart Atkinson's brilliant poems. This one he wrote not long after Opportunity's arrival at Endeavour Crater and her driving up on to Cape York. He really captures the 'spirit' of the exploration that has taken place during her long journey. I hope you all enjoy his work as much as I had fun creating a background for it. As usual, the full resolution version is on my blog. |
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Oct 5 2011, 02:36 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
By the way, here's the poem
Endeavour Revealed Compared to almost-silent Opportunity, Bunnell rode to his revelation in a cacophony Of sound. With his war horse heaving And sweating beneath him, exhausted after their climb, Surely the surgeon heard his pioneer’s heart pounding; His mount’s bellowing lungs a’huffing; The sagging, rain-drenched leaves of the trees On all sides sighing as he passed by; And as he gulped in sharp, pine tar-coated Air, far away, hidden beyond a hundred horizons, The peaty waters of distant rivers, brooks and streams, Tinkling… With trembling fingers combing through His bird’s nest of a beard as he neared The End Of All That He Had Known Before, Did he stop, look over the edge and, Bewildered by his first glimpse of that Violently beautiful vista, refuse to believe Nature was capable of such deceit, Hiding such a heaven away? Imagine – that very first view of a New World Of wide-screen wonder! Hard not to feel so small when faced With such a fairyland of geology; Easy to believe that, in the days after Terra’s Bawling birth, God’s own hands Reached down from heaven, dug deep into the Land and wrenched it apart, Leaving an impossible canyon behind, Middle Earth brought to life before Tolkien Had even imagined it: great, granite monoliths Looming over a valley carpeted with forests That splashed up against the mountains’ feet Like Nature’s own tsunami, All dwarfed by a preposterously-blue sky Painted with clouds so perfect Constable would have cried. With startled eyes wide as a Full Sierra Moon How long did he swoon over that first view of Yosemite? Today’s Bunnell has treads instead of booted feet; It leaves no hoof- or footprints behind, But twin vapour trails of dust and wheel-crushed rock. Thus a crazy Mason-Dixon line has been laid across Meridiani By Opportunity, meandering from Eagle Crater to, Around and then past Victoria as she advanced relentlessly on Cape York. Her sky is a cathedral dome painted pastel shades of orange, gold And tan; all hints, all hopes of blue are banned, Allowed to shine only for a while at dusk or dawn Before fading out of sight. And after each frigid rose petal-freezing night the Sun Which rises from behind the eastern hills Is just a cold, copper-coloured coin Surrounded by a coffee cup stain halo, Half-hearted rainbow sundogs shining on either side. This is no lush Yosemite. No soul-stirring symphony of Life Plays here; this landscape is hushed, silent. The only sounds carried on the whispering wind Are the popping of rocks beneath her wheels; The occasional faint hiss of dust wafting Over the sterile, fine-thick ground; The tired, wheezing whine of her gears. For the past hundred sols she has watched the skyline rise And fall like an ocean tide, in turn hiding And revealing just a little more of the humpback hills That have called to her since she crawled around Victoria. Now, she rolls serenely to a stop, Impatient for the view as her horizon suddenly drops Away like a magician’s velvet cloak, revealing… Wonder! Revealing - Endeavour. For endless, F5-filled months we have watched all Endeavour grow, Always thinking “Will we..?”Always wondering, “Can she..?” Now we are here. We have arrived. Without a trumpet blare, without most mortals even caring Yestersol Opportunity made Landfall at Cape York, Rolling to and then slowly up Spirit Point, Impossible Journey complete, disbelief conquered. To her right: Endeavour’s once-meek eastern hills are mountains now, And even dimmed by distance Opportunity can see A dozen different craters carved into their cliffs, The Future’s Mars’s Mt Rushmore. And dominating all – The Crater With No Name, That great Barsoomian bear paw-print clawed into the rock, Sauron’s Eye were Meridiani Mordor… Behind: the Tribulation Range traces out its gently Sweeping curve, a half-buried backbone Of age-decayed Points and Capes, forever out of reach. And all around her now: broken boulders, rocks And stones surrounding the open pit of Odyssey, all Blown out of the ground when the crater was made Millennia ago. Every geologist seeing these scenes On their flickering Post It note bordered screen Is cursing fate that they were not born a century later; Imagining they were bounding around This Noachian Narnia, stopping beside each mineralogical Marvel, bending down to lovingly run their Fat, gloved hands across its ancient sides, Sighing at the sight of flaking layers and plates Mere inches from their face. What delicious torture they must be going through… One distant sol Mars-born children will play here, Giddily chasing each other around these rugged rocks While their parents stand in silence nearby. Hushed; gloved fingertips touching tenderly; Quietly celebrating completing The Opportunity Trail Before taking cheesy family pictures Of each other, standing beside Ridout or sitting In a line on the dusty flight-deck of the great basalt Battleship “USS Tisdale 2”, shielding their tired eyes From the midday Sun to look for the diamond dust- Coated statue of the rover standing high On Tribulation’s side… Look closely at the Navcam portraits of this place While you gaze at that strange, snake-like seam shining On the ground just past Oppy’s feet and Out the corner of your eye phantom figures will appear: Here, the ghost of John Muir, leaning On his gnarled wizard staff, drinking in the view; There: Ansel Adams’ spirit, his wilderness-tanned hands Resting on his camera, waiting for just the right dusky, Dust-soft light… And ahead, standing on Endeavour’s very edge: Bierstadt, half-blinded by the beauty of the scene, Eyes closed, day-dreaming of the landscapes he will paint Of this noble, golden place… If Opportunity ends her days here, that would be a life well lived. But who’s to say that one day, When she has grown weary of Cape York’s clods of clay, And scaled Tribulation’s tightrope heights She won’t just roll down the crater’s stadium walls And set her sights on those asteroid-blasted farside hills? Would anyone really be surprised? © Stuart Atkinson 2011 |
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Oct 5 2011, 02:55 PM
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#3
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
Absolutely *gorgeous*, probably your most gorgeous artwork yet. Thank you!
It's very important that people seeing this realise that it takes Astro0 a *lot* longer illustrating these poemsters than it takes me to write the words, and it's his hard work - especially when he's so bang-head-against-door busy - that brings these things to life. Without the pictures these are just me blathering on, bringing the rovers... rover, now... to life, which some people "get", many people hate, but at the end of it all it's just the two of us trying to bring something new to this incredible adventure we're all enjoying. -------------------- |
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Oct 6 2011, 02:27 AM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 399 Joined: 28-August 07 From: San Francisco Member No.: 3511 |
Really enjoyed that, thank you both. I had great pleasure in introducing the Captain Cook poemster to my parents neighbors, who had just proudly named their little 9ft boat : Endeavour
-------------------- 'She drove until the wheels fell off...'
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Oct 6 2011, 05:23 AM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 754 Joined: 9-February 07 Member No.: 1700 |
A feast for the eyes and mind. Thank you both!
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Oct 6 2011, 07:33 AM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 41 Joined: 18-September 09 Member No.: 4946 |
Absolutely AWESOME!
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Oct 12 2011, 05:16 AM
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#7
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
Befitting the theme of 'Endeavour Revealed' is today's release of the official movie of Opportunity's epic voyage from Victoria Crater to Endeavour Crater.
Three years (so many sols) of expert driving and incredible science captured in a movie - I believe inspired by driver Paolo Belutta - and now available for us to sit back and relive all of our backseat driver experiences. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-316 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1026 Epic |
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Oct 12 2011, 05:47 PM
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#8
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Member Group: Members Posts: 796 Joined: 27-February 08 From: Heart of Europe Member No.: 4057 |
Extraordinary!
This "historical" look is somewhat futuristic. It looks like pages from 2200's book (if something like book will exist in such distant future). -------------------- |
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