Tag Archives: Magellan

Poetry

Magellan

They sat in silence, watching night fall over the brambles. A flock of distant animals could be heard on the horizon, and a woman’s inconsolable voice calling them by name, one by one, until it was dark.

Gabriel García Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons

They say Magellan once dreamt of Maccu Picchu,

burning in the moonlight and an orphan-king who

roamed the forsaken streets with a broken crown

as his tears mingled with the lashing rain. They say

Magellan never awoke from that dream and spent

the rest of his life searching for the ruined city. On

the night before his death, they say he scribbled a

last entry into his journal. Somewhere in South

America, he wrote, an orphan-king wed an orphan-queen

and they were orphans no more. They lived in great

happiness and their rule was just and wise. But the

conquistadors came one day and took gold and took

slaves and left him with a broken crown and a broken

heart and not much else. He wandered the desolate

ruins under the strange stars until one rainy night his

sanity tripped over the edge of an endless abyss. He

ventured into the jungle, then, and the great beasts

all ran from the madness of the orphan-king. On moonless

nights, Magellan wrote, even now I can hear his footsteps

echo in that strange dream-city and my soul shall find

no rest until I wander its lonely streets. In my search for

this city I have spent the riches of a thousand kingdoms

and I would spend the riches of a thousand more. I can

not breathe, I can not eat, I am neither here nor there. I

am the yearning in your tired, tired soul on sleepless nights,

he wrote, when all your desires melt away save

one.

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Prose

City of Blinding Lights

THE STARSHIP Magellan was an oasis of existence in an ocean of nothingness. It screamed its loneliness through the inky blackness of space, crying out to the cold, distant stars.

The Captain stood on the bridge, gazing out at the blue speck that beckoned like an old, faithful friend. Thirty years of deep space exploration had taken their toll on him. He was no longer a young man and his greying temples and salt-and-pepper beard made sure he didn’t forget that. He focused on the distant speck again and forced his turbid thoughts to settle. And his mind moved upon silence.

And the Magellan rushed onward to Earth. Too long had it been in the empty voids of eternal night. It craved the noise of humanity, the sweet sad songs of Earth: the crackle of a small, warm fire deep inside a distant forest; the incessant hum of pulsing, breathing cities; the wind forever whistling across desolate deserts of Artic ice; all this and more, it craved, like a moth craves the flame. And onward it ploughed, delirious with thoughts of union, ignoring the ominous premonitions that seemed to almost weigh down its sleek silver exterior.

And as the blue planet drew close enough to fill the Captain’s viewport, a shudder of horror ran through him and the crew that crowded around behind him. For the Earth was dark. Not the quiet, gentle dark of a new moon but the harsh darkness of life terribly extinguished. For none of the great cities of Earth were lit up. And the silence that greeted the navigators was the same silence they had lived with for thirty years; they knew it all too well.

And the Magellan cried out in anguish and frustration and its cries were heard by the cold, distant stars, and the cold, dark planet and it sobbed quietly as the infinite loneliness of space silently closed in upon it.

Inspired by the greatest short story ever written, Arthur C. Clarke’s Songs of Distant Earth.

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