Cosmonauts do it in Heaven

Keith Gottschalk

• Publisher: Hands-On Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781928433132
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781928433224
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Poetry
• Index: Literature

Keith Gottschalk is one of very few English language poets after Walt Whitman to compose poems celebrating engineers, inventions, and scientists. With wit and paradox, these poems explore our solar system, and celebrate astronomers and spaceflight. This collection opens with an imaginary trip through time from Copernicus to Einstein ñ those who literally made space as we conceptualise it today. It closes with an imaginary trip through our solar system. In between, we find moving elegies to astronauts who lost their lives, and celebrations of a glittering international constellation of engineers, inventors, mathematicians, and researchers. Irony, allusions, double-entendres, and wonderment are always looking over the readerís shoulder. Many of these poems, composed over thirty-four years, have already been individually published to acclaim in literary and other magazines.

GETTING HIGH

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention

– Shakespeare: Henry V

Getting High

Ulli Deutschländer 1940–2013

John Moss 1943–2010

here, on every overhang & slippery stone

we confront our ancient enemy

gravity

only outwitted by strategy & muscle

& even then, only temporarily, fleetingly

while every nerve keenly aware

that the penalty for

failing

falling

breaking the laws of physics

is death.

above eight kilometres we are in the death zone:

no oxygen mask will fall from the ceiling

onto our gasping mouth;

no flight attendant can assist

for frostbite & pulmonary oedema.

Chris Bonington climbs free, joining those few

who ride the clouds, gaze down onto cloud tops;

Chuck Yeager scrambles over moraines of turbulence

juddering through the sound barrier;

Valeri Polyakov jumars up a sky full of nuts & cams

& bivouacs at 400 kms.

to strive, clinging by fingertips

to ascend, to solve an interesting problem

to ascend the next rock pitch

to turn back, to save life in foul weather;

sometimes to summit,

to ascend summit above summits

to see swirling clouds sweep & crash below

the squelch of our boots in mud, the glisten of ice & snow.

in the world of quantum physics

appearances deceive

the possibilities are uncertain

& only the impossible is true:

let your second-strongest lead

the strongest must bring up the rear, help stragglers

till we reach the ridge, crest out.

to embark on our adventure

ascenders re-packing their backpacks,

rocket engineers reviewing designs,

must pare down every kilogram:

Apollo 17 jumps free of the floodlights

abseils up a rope of fire

climbs through the night

to reach for the Moon.

Reinhold Messner soars to breath-taking summits

Bessie Colman arises on an arête of air to fly her colours

Liu Yang climbs to a celestial palace &

grigris down to ground.

____________

Ulli Deutschländer, John Moss: keen South African mountain climbers who both died from cancer.

Chris Bonington: famous mountain summiteer.

Chuck Yeager: first pilot to break the sound barrier.

Valeri Polyakov: holds the record longest duration spaceflight of 437 days.

jumar: a clamp that is attached to a climbing rope.

Reinhold Messner: famous mountain summiteer.

Bessie Colman: first black woman pilot.

Liu Yang: China’s first woman astronaut who visited Tiangong (celestial palace) space station in 2012.

grigri: an assisted braking belay device.

Fast Track

Eugen Sänger 1905–1964

Irene Bredt 1911–1983

David Urie 1932–

the visionary with a slide-rule named you: Silbervogel

the win...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Contents
• MAKING SPACE
• MAKING OUT
• GETTING HIGH
• PHASES OF THE MOON
• SKY BEYOND SKY
• Index of first lines
• Acknowledgements