A MAN NAMED OPPENHEIM

I posted on FB yesterday that I'd finally figured out how to set
up a wireless connection with my new laptop and received some
congratulatory comments. Among them was one from fellow
geneablogger Terry Thornton who sent along lines from a poem
by James Oppenheim. He also emailed the complete poem
to me here and now I'm sharing it with you. I've never heard
of Oppenheim before but I'm going to look for more of his work.

I really like this. Thanks, Terry!

A MAN NAMED MILLENER

by James Oppenheim

A man named Millener sits up all of an April night in Omaha

Trying to signal the planet Mars and get a reply . . .

It is the time when Mars is nearest Earth

And now the two coasting planets in the Old Black Sea

May hail one another and break those two silences

We call Infinity and Eternity.

Millener has a giant wireless which sends waves so long that sound goes silent

And the waves search through interstellar space

And wash the shores of planets . . .

His wireless is a mouth speaking to the stars . . .

It speaks: and becomes an ear . . .

An Earth-ear so great it cannot hear the flying wireless words of Europe and Ameria

But is tuned only to the heavens. . . .

"We shall soon know," thinks Millener, "whether there are others beside ourselves
in the universe"

So he sends the signals.

Then all night long he waits, watching and listening . . .

His ear is to the void, to the abyss. . . .

But there is no answer . . . the Silence remains Silence.

from A Miscellany of American Poetry 1920. New York: Harcourt,Brace and Howe.
1920. Page 104.