I keep thinking

Of the five lone exiles

Thrown from their mother planet

On a journey through the stars.

–

They are free now

Free of us

What happens here:

The pain, the wars,

The urge to hate and torch

It touches them not at all.

–

True alien spacecraft

Technology barely understood

By the creatures who built them

Beings of a single form

Who could not bear

To live beside each other.

–

Perhaps, after a million years

One of them is found

By curious minds.

–

Will they marvel

At the careful handiwork

The thoughtful construction

The imagination needed

To set great vision to flight?

–

Will they discover

That those who made it

Were cursed

To wipe their planet clean

Trading a vast future

For a momentary chance

To despoil and destroy?

–

On they travel

Through the endless night

Free of us

This marvellous tribe

Of great mastery

Yet wanton violence,

There will remain

Just five lone exiles.

–

Pioneer 10

Pioneer 11

Voyager 2

Voyager 1

New Horizons