Ode to Kosmos 482

 

 

Ode to Kosmos 482

Kosmos 482 was an attempted Soviet Venus probe

launched on March 31, 1972 at 04 hundred hours. 

The main descent craft crashed while on a trajectory 

over Australia and the Indian Ocean on May 10, 2025.

Old soviet space junk 

half-ton of good intentions 

Venus probe that failed to reach escape velocity;

You are the workers of the world that failed to unite

You are Trotsky’s ice pick, Lenin’s hair tonic,

Gorbachev’s wine stain;

You are the cake that never rose —the cookie       

that never crumbled.

Forever trapped in earth’s lower orbit

your booster rockets misfiring

like Putin’s T72’s bogged and bombed out 

on the Ukrainian Steppes.

You are mission aborted

mired forever in a giant looping earth orbit 

that could only end one way —

in an anonymous watery grave.

Still, the educated among us stand out in open fields, 

earthbound and looking up —

as if to salute the descent

Thrilled by the silver mark it leaves scratched into the sky

like some twentieth-century vandal

hellbent on making immortal their homage to bad ideas.

 

  

from "Thirty poems: 2020-2025"