This Made Me

Also anxious to leave
Some monument of me
Behind, so I'd not be
The only one exempt
From lying's liberty,

I began composing
Untruths more honestly
Than those who wrote their truths
Garlanded gaudily
With earnest fripperies,

Adorning histories
With dueling perjuries,
Pretended mysteries,
Filmy transparencies
And all the rest of it,

The bric-a-brac of pasts
Ground out of powdered facts.
I, Lucian, empire-
Descended common man,
Syrian writing Greek

To Roman countrymen,
Declare myself lunar,
A visitor to strange
Realms that science factions'
Armies contest by night,

The future that I failed
To guess anywhere near
To right: I sit inside
A bubble of machine
Composing poems from ghosts,

Not knowing what they mean
Myself, hybrid being,
As ruled lines of clouds stream
From the thundering wings
Of airborne human things.