"Al Purdy's Star Wars"

Here's a little lark that arose out of an exchange with poet Kevin Spenst a few months ago. I don't see this poem going into a book -- or anywhere else, really -- so I'd thought I'd post it here, on Canada Day, just for fun.

AL PURDY’S STAR WARS

— say the names

Tatooine and Dantooine

Alderaan and Hoth

Coruscant and Mustafar

Geonosis and Naboo

On Tattooine they were moisture farmers

            scrap dealers and smugglers

desert men with senses welded shut by the sand

wandering the dunes, Jawa and Jedi

            dewback and bantha

            living on the verge of their thirst

            beyond the Jundland Wastes

On Hoth they froze

in their bunks

            toes curled so black not even

light could escape

but with the sun they laboured

against an empire while their sweat

turned to ice and the Tauntauns and Wampas

            remembered an age of lizards

that basked long ago

in subcellular sleep

— say the names

Tatooine and Dantooine

Alderaan and Hoth

Dagobah and Mustafar

Geonosis and Jakku

not the guttural names of the Hutt in Huttese

but in the beep and chirr of droids

in the startling whine

of a mynock

in an asteroid’s heart

On Dagobah the secret was kept

the darkness in the dark place that slumbered

in the thickness of its biomass

a long forgotten conscience

that roused to the laughter in the cave

— say the names

Dantooine and Tatooine

Hoth and Alderaan

Mustafar and Coruscant

Geonosis and Naboo

            a starfighter lands by the waterfall

in a hail of blaster fire

            and champions are fed to the wilds

of ceaseless appetite

            and the spies die like spies

and a lake of magma

boils and senators

vote on their own abolition

And Kashyyyk is distant and evergreen

And Mon Cala shines

like a disc-shaped orbital sea

There are drums that sound in the forest

            a city that waits in the clouds

            forgotten worlds

            forgotten republics

            a family scattered by war

            and reunited in the stars  

And Alderaan remembered.