Never the Muse is absent
from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry
and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.
Pindar, Tenth Pythian Ode
translated by Richmond Lattimore
quoted at “Hyperborea” at Wikipedia
and—... neither by ship nor on foot would you find
the marvelous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans.
“If you could walk to Mars,” he asked, “would you go?”
“Walk to Mars?” she asked.
Chemicals changed to electricity.
You can’t get there by boat. You can’t walk there.
But there’s something about guitars and flutes.
And I think if a scientist declared
he was going to send a spacecraft there
everyone would be excited except
some men and women quiet in the back
who would look at each other and just smile.
Chemicals changed to electricity.
Spacecraft use both getting from here to there.
Lava flows. Strange rains and stranger snows fall.
Scientists send spacecraft from here to there
to study the lava and rain and snow.
But there’s something about guitars and flutes.
Fingers on strings. Breath against a thin tube.
Where you can’t sail to and you can’t walk to
lava and rain and snow I think are sounds
fingers on strings breath against a thin tube
and planets and moons move I think they dance.
But there’s something about guitars and flutes.
And I think if a scientist declared
he was going to send a spacecraft there
everyone would be excited except
some men and women quiet in the back
who would look at each other and just smile.
Chemicals changed to electricity.
Spacecraft use both getting from here to there.
Lava flows. Strange rains and stranger snows fall.
Scientists send spacecraft from here to there
to study the lava and rain and snow.
But there’s something about guitars and flutes.
Fingers on strings. Breath against a thin tube.
Where you can’t sail to and you can’t walk to
lava and rain and snow I think are sounds
fingers on strings breath against a thin tube
and planets and moons move I think they dance.
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