Did they fear the same as us? Unknowing
future widows, men at arms, sailors
on the yards of their outdated, flimsy ships,
watching the river slough away, their doom crawl out;
the prows of north and south’s black warships beat
together like an awful, smoking heart,

Did they know their doom, as we do now,
when they saw it filling Hampton Roads
with boiling rust? Know that centuries
from then those same black silhouettes would pry
open the holes between the stars; would ripple
down from empty skies with shreds of interstellar
darkness clinging to their scaly metal hulls?

Help me, blogosphere! Am I on any kind of right track?