SETI



Out in the desert, the slowly tracking spires
of radio antennae chart the night;
great ears that listen, star by star, alight
hopeful that amongst the random noise
one day a whisper other and unknown,
yet recognisably a conscious voice
of code beyond where solar comets course,
stands out against the cosmic background drone.
What worlds ambiguous may tug the line
and worlds still stranger offer hints and clues?
What arts baroque, and what oracular news
of sciences we cannot yet define?
But when? And what, by interstellar ‘phone

will tell us, faintly, we are not alone?


Previously published in Asimov’s Science Fiction August 2016

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