The Nameless Genius

For Robert Goddard

Looking into boosters like crystal balls.
I wonder if you really saw the future.
In a mad scientist’s coat
you examined the multilayered-onion
of the first gyroscope. In the grey
October morning you split
sheet meal like skin and built
the tank to house
the ultra-cool liquid fuel
nobody tried before.

Dreams become reality,
You said.

You believed.

On the front porch The New
York Times slandered you
in the name of convention.
The headlines proclaiming
your dream fallacy:
rockets were toys and nothing more.
Not tools, not vehicles
and most certainly not
weapons. Humanity
was meant to be Earthbound
forever.

Then the hot war ended
and the cold one began,
the government
called upon von Braun’s boys,
fresh from the Reich.

I imagine injured
egos
when they confessed:

You wrote their textbooks.