Sputnik: October 4, 1957 [by David Lehman]

On this day in 1957, Sputnik went up

and my sister Joan and I 
and our father went up

to the roof of our apartment house

on Arden Street, and watched the sky.

I don't know what we thought we saw
in the October night amid the lights and white dust

but it wasn't the space race

with our rockets exploding on takeoff

and their monkeys in space capsules orbiting the earth.

 

Only later did we memorize the names

of the seven clean-cut Project Mercury

astronauts on the cover of Life.

Project Gemini. Rendezvous and dock.

Project Apollo. A soft landing on the moon.

Science in the form of technology
was about to deliver a knockout blow

to the antiquated forces of culture,
and in Cambridge, England, they were

preparing to have one hell of a brawl about it,

 

but we were just glad to be watchers of

the sky from our Manhattan roof top,

and we had our money down on the Yanks

to take game three from the Milwaukee Braves
in the World Series tomorrow night.

-- David Lehman

Comments

[lally]

nicely done David...we watched from a high school plaint field to see the blink blink blink pass so far overhead it was unimaginable...yet real...a new age being born...