Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars

by Frederick Turner

  The drug sets right what culture has made wrong;

  The drug produces the external signs

  That Ecotheism requires of us:

  Humility, contentment, tolerance

  Of others in like state, a wise acceptance

  Of the world, a high threshold of boredom;

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  And chemists testify how dopamine

  Receptor sites decrease in number

  In the brain with long use of the drug,

  And serotonin levels rise, and androgens

  Diminish, and adrenalin decays.

  This is the end of steroid poisoning;

  Most cancer rates must fall; the brutal male

  Of sperm and blood is rendered mild and good;

  The woman knows no grief and cramp and rage

  When the dark time of the month comes around;

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  The lifespan of the user is enlarged.

  Some days later Ruhollah is set free.

  Garrison seems an addict of the drug;

  But something in him that must love his pain,

  Or fear his happiness, turns him away.

  His mind in any case is quite confused;

  One night he goes into his mother’s room,

  Watches her breathing, as he’s done before;

  But this time he is drawn up closer still

  To where he sees in veins upon her neck

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  Beat, undiminished, her vitality;

  And as a child will gingerly enfold

  A kitten with its hand, he lets his hands

  Pass round her throat in loving symbiosis

  So that like kneading bread or fondling

  That which requires release to take its fill

  He might thus purge his appetites in hers

  And set the balance of the world aright.

  But just as he’s about to squeeze, she wakes;

  Not in alarm, but as a dream had ended

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  Where it should, leaving the dreamer free

  To swim up briefly to the realm of light.

  Her blue eyes open like a girl’s, she stares

  Without comprehension into his face;

  She has become quite happy now, he sees,

  An innocent, a valuable statesman

  For the cause of all the weak and the poor,

  A symbol standing for the natural.

  Instead of what he was about to do,

  He therefore kisses her and lets her go;

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  She falls again to sleep; his spirit is

  At last defeated utterly by hers.

  And Tripitaka wanders through the city

  Seeking he knows not what. In a café

  A girl, a groupie of the Games, comes up;

  She recognizes him from video.

  In Athens, quite unlike those country districts

  Chance chose for his last draught of life, such ease

  And licence of address have gotten common;

  Now it has further implications, in the style

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  Of a sincere religious intimacy,

  Affected by the Ecotheists, who

  Assume all persons equal in the sight

  Of God, and thus all differences between

  One and another to be signs of pride;

  They therefore somewhat hector you with smiles,

  And take your arm, ignoring the details

  Of what one’s choice of company might be.

  So Tripitaka hides behind the show

  Of military blankness of expression;

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  But finds to his surprise he likes the girl.

  And adolescence, thank the lord, has not

  Yet lost its yen to be at least outrageous;

  Yanni—she calls herself—plucks up her courage

  And really tries as best she can to get

  This young man who would terrify her parents

  To make a woman of her. Tripitaka,

  Infinitely tender, must explain

  The sickness for the second time to one

  Whose life must not be injured by it; though

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  The doctors tell him any risk is slight.

  But unlike Sachiko, this Yanni is

  Not thus so easily put off; “You seem

  To be so sad, for such a famous man,”

  She says; “It’s something I can do for you,

  To smooth away your pain. I’ll take the risk.”

  And Tripitaka’s generosity

  Is such that at these words he feels a shock

  Of hot desire almost forgotten, so

  He need not lie; she knows he is not lying

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  When he then tells her how he wants her, but

  How it would shatter him to be the one

  To soil her body with his old disease.

  “But there are other ways,” she says, as if

  She knew of such sophistications; he

  Knows he’s on safe ground with her ignorance

  And can invent a danger that’s not there.

  But in his hotel room that night alone,

  Having with courtly gentleness sent home

  This totally surprising seductress

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  Rightly convinced that she has conquered him,

  He finds a certain spring of feeling flow

  As if some obstacle has been removed;

  And now he longs and pines with love’s sour honey

  For Beatrice van Riebeck, as before;

  And this time strangely there is no resistance,

  No stubborn censor of his thoughts and pain.

  He knows now he must serve that Beatrice

  As a crusader served a lady; or

  Must be undone by her as justice would.

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  And is not chivalry the finer when

  Quite out of date and inappropriate,

  And under moral censure, it still flowers

  Out of the spirit like a sport or freak

  Of something ancient, guilty, beautiful?—

  Something out of the priesthood of our Adam,

  The antique dumbness of a beaten sword?

  Garrison waits for Tripitaka’s coming

  As if this were the only chance that’s left

  To form his life into the shape of truth.

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  But though he watches the arrivals closely,

  He somehow misses his return, and must

  Be surprised next morning by his presence.

  The weather has renewed the heats of summer;

  The guards make it a practice every dawn

  To bathe in the Alpheus where a sandbank

  Dams up the current in a long blue pool.

  Garrison goes there sometimes just to watch—

  He loves their naked carelessness and play—

  But does not join them; he is not invited.

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  This time there is a piebald body in

  The company of bathers. Garrison’s

  Heart leaps, recognizing Tripitaka,

  And now a strange confusion overcomes him;

  Almost too shy to walk back with his friend

  As Tripitaka dries off with his towel,

  He tags along, not the assured zealot

  Any more, but a boy sick with desires

  He does not understand. But Tripitaka,

  Renewed in spirit, and here with the brother

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  Of his pale beloved, not yet aware

  That contradictions heavy as the world

  Must now attend his actions, eagerly

  Questions Garrison about the progress

  Of the Taos talks, and of the plans

  Of the Van Riebeck rebels afterwards.

  “We have to set them free,” says Garrison,

  “That will be in the treaty certainly.

  It means for now we’ve lost. But when the comet—”
>
  He gestures at the smudge of white that glows

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  Low in the western sky against the dawn—

  “Has safely struck on Mars, we’ll try again.”

  Garrison speaks unthinkingly, and then

  On impulse asks his friend to join him

  On his secluded terrace for some breakfast.

  Once there, to the surprise of Tripitaka,

  Garrison starts to weep, and tells how he

  Had wandered in the desert of despair,

  How he had even contemplated murder

  And thus how suicide seemed sweet and good

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  In this blind alley of the lonely world.

  “But what about our faith?” asks Tripitaka;

  “Have you forgotten what we did it for?”

  Ten days before, this conversation might

  Have ended otherwise, for then the younger

  Was cast down with a dread not different

  By much, from what his older friend feels now.

  But Garrison perceives the change that’s come

  On Tripitaka as a sign that he

  Is qualified to punish him and thus

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  To purge the guilt he can no longer bear.

  He kneels down to his friend, and now, before

  Either knows what is happening, has parted

  The bathing towel and has sunk his face

  In penance, adoration, and desire

  Into the loins of the warrior,

  With their soft flocculence of grey affliction.

  Gently, as if he were a patient doctor

  Lifting a flap of torn flesh from a wound,

  Or like a mother with a fevered child,

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  Tripitaka raises the long head

  Of Garrison from where it lies between

  His thighs, and sets it to one side, and stands,

  Turning to tie the towel back again.

  He looks at Garrison and pities him;

  A child whose father has molested her

  Can sometimes feel such pity with her fear,

  But Tripitaka only fears the future,

  Void as it lies now of any bar or screen

  To set before the knowledge of his crime.

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  “Oh Garrison,” he says, so softly that

  His friend can scarcely hear, or understand;

  “I see now I have killed an innocent man.

  May God have mercy on our souls.” With this

  He leaves the terrace; Garrison looks up,

  And breathes in tremulously, feels a clump

  Of fleshly sorrow rise around his heart

  That must escape as a great arid sob.

  And what’s my purpose with these puppetries?

  Psychology’s a clean whore, plausible

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  To the sophisticated trade, and turns

  A dozen tricks a day. How have my heroes

  Come to this place?—where settled principle,

  Coherence of intention and idea,

  The cosmos balanced with the acting soul,

  Imagination like a demigod

  Building, from what materials a life

  With all its limitations self-imposed

  Or else contingent will supply, a meaning—

  Where all these things are made subordinate

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  To the trite buttons of a threadbare motive?

  Better the hypocrite, the moralist,

  The foolish martinet, the tragic gargoyle,

  Than we the suave and slimy tolerators

  Of human weakness, by whose smooth excuse

  The human beast divine is novelized.

  And Tripitaka, who is named for one

  Who kept a faith and carried through the mountains

  Scriptures that have lived two thousand years,

  Now feels the sullen glory of his name

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  Call him again to chivalry and death,

  And will not let his disillusionment

  With his friend Garrison divert his purpose.

  He will escape all our interpretation;

  He will defy verisimilitude

  Bought by conformity to expectation;

  He will drag us, whose notions are enmired

  In clichés from the twentieth century,

  “Kicking and screaming” into an ancient world.

  Garrison strikes a certain contract too.

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  After his erstwhile friend has left, he falls

  Into a great calm, like paralysis;

  He recognizes what he is, a cripple,

  Bound for a certain time to walk the earth;

  He shall take on the robe of parricide,

  Blinding himself in punishment and pride,

  And so possess those goods for which a crime

  Such as this is might be committed—freedoms

  Such as shall fit a very scourge of God.

  A few days later orders long expected

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  Arrive for Tripitaka, which will send

  Him back to Flinders Dome for three more weeks

  Of training for the next Olympic War.

  The old dispute between Australia

  And Indonesia over Irian Jaya

  (The western territory of New Guinea)

  Has broken out once more. The mountain tribes

  Now rise again to claim their independence

  From Jakarta; their cousins in Papua

  Begin to send them arms; the Ecotheists,

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  Neutral in this conflict, see a chance

  To take the world’s attention from the stain

  Of the humiliating treaty signed

  At Taos; the Javan paramilitary

  Stands at the Papuan frontier, and so

  The UN has declared a state of war.

  Thailand, Malaysia, and New Zealand, bound

  By friendship pacts, line up with Papua

  And Canberra, but still the conflict seems

  Unequal by the strict Olympic code.

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  So Tripitaka leaves, without farewells.

  Tripitaka goes to war against the enemies of Australia in the Olympiad; the poem follows the course of the war, and the revolt of the warriors against the Ecotheist world order. Tripitaka escapes with some of them and joins the Martian forces, in an attempt to expiate the murder of his benefactor Chance.

  Scene ii:

  The Olympic War

  The protocols of the Olympic charter

  Permit for each million of population

  A state to field one soldier in the wars.

  Now Tripitaka comes, in time to see

  The muster of the allies: first, the Aussies,

  In their lopsided hats and khaki shorts,

  Eighteen men and eighteen women (marching,

  Brown rangy Sheilas from the women’s camp,

  Including Tripitaka’s friend the sergeant),

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  Finely equipped with microcircuitry

  And lightweight life-support, and fancy optics;

  Next, the Malaysians, thirty-eight of them,

  Trained like the Aussies in the Brit tradition,

  With chequered caps and ceremonial kris;

  Then the large body of the Thais, an army

  Numbering a hundred forty-one,

  And boasting in their ranks two kick-boxers

  Of most advanced degree, and sharpshooters

  Expert in the Zen arts of archery;

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  Then seven grinning “sheppoes” from New Zealand

  With their sophisticated jamming gear;

  And last, the nine dark Papuans, whose eyes

  Glow like a woodfire under beetle brows,

  Some of the canniest and fiercest soldiers

  In the world, aficionados say.

  They line up in parade, and silence falls;

  The head count is two
hundred thirty-one.

  Forty miles off, the Indonesian force

  Stands at attention by their simple flag

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  Of red and white: three hundred twenty-nine.

  And now begins the toughest phase of training,

  The tuning of the flesh to perfect pitch,

  The melding of the forces into one,

  The matching of the men and women to

  The tiny powerful machines of war.

  According to Olympic rules each army may

  Take into battle just as much equipment,

  Weapons, and supplies as it can carry,

  Lighter-than-air devices banned for freight,

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  And nuclear weapons totally forbidden.

  All other portable materiel

  Being permitted, every army has

  A group of weightlifters whose duty is

  To carry in one trip across the mile

  Of DMZ around the reservation

  Those largest instruments of modem war:

  The lightweight observation planes and strafers;

  The tractor-bikes, recoilless guns, and radars;

  The water-stills and workshops, hospitals,

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  And raw materials and tools to stock

  The mobile factories that they will build.

  Whole libraries exist of books and tapes

  Of theory and advanced mathematics on

  The parsimony, packing, scheduling,

  And gaming calculus of those old wars;

  Boys in those days played endless battle-games

  On home computers with illegal turbos

  To replicate Olympic strategies.

  The battleground, ten thousand square miles

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  In the center of Australia, is not

  A hospitable place for humankind.

  Desert and scrub, the mallee and the wattle,

  Gaunt-limbed ghost gum smelling of oil of camphor,

  Coarse grass, stony gibber desert, dry lakes

  With rims of bitter salts and sweetheart’s names;

  Eroded outcrops of fantastic stone;

  Balancing rocks and places where the wind,

  As hot as ovens, whistles in a crevice;

  Sometimes a hopping mirage from a nightmare

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  Of the Pleistocene, a mob of ‘roos;

  Domes of rabbits; lorikeets, cockatoos.

  Under the sun the colors burn to tan,

  To dull brass albedo and brilliant grey,

  Crimson and ocher of the bloodbark; sometimes

  After a rain a carpet of blue lupins

  As sweet as dawn, or cannas of vermilion

  So tender that red seems the softest tint.

  Always the smell of silicates and soda,

  Rocks split by the heat or the night chill,

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