Wednesday, July 29, 2015

My Poem: An Endless Voyage



Science is an endless voyage to the unknown
Don’t sit at the coffee shop until dawn
Move, move, move to the open air outside
Go, go, go to the seashore at the high tide

Row, row, row your boat into the dark regions
Unfurl the sails wide to make it move fast forward!
Sail, sail, sail into the ever vague harbor ahead
Fear not the high waves and horrible storms

Watch the clouds sailing by across the sky
Watch the seagulls flying over your head to spy
Watch the shining stars in the night heavens
Watch the compass needle showing you directions

Sing, sing, sing sailor songs loudly and gleefully
Let your vibrant voices reach the sky boundlessly
Beat, beat, beat your drums powerfully
Invite the Sun and the Moon to dance briskly

Transcend the known!
Pursue the unknown!
Unravel the mysteries!
Cross the borders!

Discover the medicines to cure all diseases
Find out the methods to reach immortality
Seek out the ways of all beings living prosperously
Build our other homes on other habitable planets

Teach your sons and daughters to love science
Train them to expand their curiosity forever
Make them know other lives exist in infinite space
Assure them they’re far bigger than space ever

Ask your children to paint their blissful faces
On the limitless paper of the canopy of the sky
To write down their own mathematical equations
On the boundless surface of the glittery night sky

Science is a happy journey that knows no finality
From the known to the ever-expanding unknown
You find you know you don’t know very often
Fear not any undecidedness and uncertainty

Even though science knows nothing absolute
And can as well be wrong and inaccurate
It’s already flown and landed humans on the Moon
Sent spacecraft across the solar system of our own

And what are the things religions so far have done?
A little bit of loving and caring of our neighbors
The most they’ve been doing is violence and wars
Though they’ve existed thousands of years on the globe!

Modern science is still very young indeed
It’s been developing since 400 years in the past
Though still young, it’s very powerful in its deed
Leading us to the civilized deed, mind and heart

Science is the shining candle in any murky rooms
Bringing enlightenment into the human gloomy mind
In the hands of great scientists the world around 
It frees humans from blind faith, arrogance and silliness

Silliness knows no limits in all directions
Arrogance shuts the door of the learning houses tightly
Blind faith brutally kills your capacity to grow intellectually 
Intelligence dances in the silent oceans of limitless progress

Let’s sail from one ocean to another unstoppably
Let’s cleave the huge waves fearlessly 
Let’s conquer the horrific storms daringly 
Let’s penetrate the dark nights valiantly

Row, row, row your science boat more speedily
Break through the unknown determinedly
Don’t take a long rest during the long, long voyage
Until you arrive at the place of nowhere of silence

The science harbor is always elusive and vague
As you come nearer in the sailing voyage
Further and further again endlessly it moves
It’s always greater than any gods and goddesses!

Embrace and hug science
Kiss it! Kiss it! Kiss it!
Try its taste and its grace!
Spread it! Spread it! Spread it!



Jakarta, 29 July 2015
Ioanes Rakhmat