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". . . bodies naked on the low damp ground . . ."

---T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, III  

Look at those naked people, all asleep

here in this spacious garden I have made
for them. after their spaceship crashed.  This is
a Pardise of sorts---plenty of fruit
and water for their sustenance; climate
controlled precisely; and no predators
to threaten them.  A soporific in
the air ensures their slumber, which extends
their lifespans.  They will wake---to eat and drink;
to pass their wastes in that thick copse of trees
yonder; to copulate and to give birth
(mothers, of course, will wake also to nurse
their young).  Most of them will die in sound sleep,
after living into extreme old age.
I have listened to and learned their language,
and heard their snores, belches, gasping, and farts,
along with loud screams of their intercourse.
But they are mine to care for, always, now.
This is not charitable on my part:
it is, rather, vengeance---restrained---for I
had wanted to kill them, as some of them---
the few who had traveled in that spaceship---
had raped my sister, leaving her behind:
ravaged, sick, helpless, and, all too soon, dead.
Wanting to slaughter all of them, I reached
out to their navigational system
intending to cause a most horrific crash,
a huge impact that I, myself, might feel---
with no survivors.  But I seemed to hear
(across the light years, as these people count
distances) my late sister, Gaia's voice.
still orbiting her swelling, dying star:
"Do them no harm, for even as they are,
"they are still mine, created out of me,
"and all that I have left as legacy."
Rebuked, I brought them to a bumpy skid
that twisted their sleek vessel's body and
collapsed their landing gear.  Regardless of
tools and material they might have brought,
they could not have rebuilt for an escape.
The mangled hull rests, now, upon the hill
to which I brought it.  Most of them had been
a little shaken up, and bruised; dizzy,
perhaps, from the careen of their descent,
and force that pressed their bodies one last time.
As they stepped, climbed, or crawled out, they began
to breathe the fragrant air, and so to tire
almost at once.  Some of those first have died:
their progeny have greatly multiplied,
content with the resources I provide,
their penchant for mayhem anesthetized.
I think my late sister would be surprised.

Starward