Explanetation

Fifty-five million kilometers from my home
On a gray lifeless mass stands a small block of stone
Perfectly symmetrical from skilled “hands” was it honed?
Residing, perhaps for centuries, on the Red Planet

I first heard of this news via the telephone
My daughter, bright and inquisitive, was breathless as she intoned
That an unmanned expedition had made the finding near a zone
Where scientists first, thought they’d found, a mound of granite

Soon the world was awash with fevered speculation
Opinions flowed and angst was sowed in nearly every single nation
Some leaders calmed whilst others spoke with wild gesticulation
And some took fires, of molten fear and promptly fanned it

The stone was found, on leaden ground, by a U.S. Martian rover
On a cold, barren plateau devoid of air, bankrupt of clover
Just standing there, a four foot square, and soon the Earth shouted moreover
We want an answer, by whose hand? We demand it!

America, announced the finding, was historic and life altering
Its enemies, around the globe, implied Uncle Sam was merely paltering
They claimed a ruse, was being enacted, by an empire clearly faltering
‘Twas no “accident”, this revelation, someone had “planned” it

Many Christians, claimed this was, not a find of science
Merely an attempt, to force them into, a new “enlightenment compliance”
It was God’s work, this they spoke, in outraged, open defiance
Blasphemous was the term they used to brand it

The Jews in Galilee, were somewhat more reserved
Was it God’s hand, or man’s, where the honor was deserved?
And the Muslim he cried out “more chicanery to preserve
Allah’s gift, for the usurper, who will reprimand it"

Across Tibet, and mighty China, and in India lived the Buddhist
The fury of the reaction they affirmed surely does elude us
Does not the master, say that which, exists but yet, so precludes us
Should be ignored? - and once reviewed they merely banned it

Let it be known, to the reader, before which we learn more
It is a year, of great strife, known as Twenty sixty-four
The Four Horsemen have brought Famine and with it Plague and Death and War
Until humanity, cries to the heavens, we just can’t stand it

Low and behold upon this stone is uncovered an inscription
And the Russians and the Chinese and all the rest request description
Then the Americans so bemoan its most arduous encryption
With all citing, prolonged entreaties to understand it

As it turned out all the aggrieved needn’t harbored any fear
The inscription, was decoded, by BP short of one year
For it said, in crimson red and words that bled, PLEASE DRILL HERE
And news rang out, “Let’s head to Mars, so we can scam it”

So now I sit, with telescope, watching Mars so all alone
They say that war is imminent, and I desire it be known
I wish that no one, from this Earth, had ever found that block of stone
That “Gulf” of space, the human race, should not have spanned it

As to whom we have to “thank” for the block that is a mystery
Like so many, of the enigmas, handed down to us thru history
Thru my lens, I tell my friends, a tranquil world, has now turned blistery
May someone, somewhere, know peace, for God commands it