Neil Armstrong

The great man is dead And he may find in this voyage So many Columbus that left us blind Without knowledge Of earth indisputable speck Steering the shipwreck With malfunctioned cameras of dream. The great man is dead What this this new situation for him Who made the first step Through the wilderness of galaxies On the threshold of the moon Ambiguous mystery of origin That makes man's giant leap? The great man is dead, An an entire age follows after him Dwindling our thirst for adventure By the measure fear Of what our puny worth affords. He was our Balboa there. Death is something that happened here A long before parachute sail Confronted the invisible with dead arguments. Death then is his escape The brilliant subplot of faith Refuting all the universe as strings For why die to become what already are Stars die to become stars He dies to give back to dust What dust has denied it wants to be. The death of great men Still make us see, how common we are How similar from birth to end How flimsy the mirage in which we pretend. Shall I tell him farewell Whom I soon shall meet Not differing in status, not separated by class Just dust of star become food for grass That shall in one soon season Become indistinguishable from us Little specks In the universe of great mysteries. Let me salute him who fired boyhood to believe Life is greater than man's logic perceives.