Dichtersbankje | Ray Bradbury

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If Only We Had Taller Been

The fence we walked between the years

Did balance us serene;

It was a place half in the sky where

In the green of leaf and promising of peach

We’d reach our hand to touch and almost touch

that lie,

That blue that was not really blue.

If we could reach and touch, we said,

‘Twould teach us, somehow, never to be dead.

We ached, we almost touched that stuff;

Our reach was never quite enough.

So, Thomas, we are doomed to die.

O, Tom, as I have often said,

How sad we’re both so short in bed.

If only we had taller been,

And touched God’s cuff, His hem,

We would not have to sleep away and go with them

Who’ve gone before,

A billion give or take a million boys or more

Who, short as we, stood tall as they could stand

And hoped by stretching thus to keep their land,

Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.

But they, like us, were standing in a hole.

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall

Across the Void, across the Universe and all?

And, measure out with rocket fire,

At last put Adam’s finger forth

As on the Sistine Ceiling,

And God’s great hand come down the other way

To measure Man and find him Good,

And Gift him with Forever’s Day?

I work for that.

Short man. Large dream. I send my rockets forth

between my ears,

Hoping an inch of Will is worth a pound of years.

Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall:

We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!

We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!

© Ray Bradbury