The visitor from the plains of Mars
Was polite in the face of Earth’s trees —
Their tangled mass, their tensile brachiate bars
Choking the declivities — no space, no ease.
At last, for lack of breadth, missing in the sky
Some soothing wavelengths negligible to our senses,
He left, leapt back through time, and to his hostess’s pensive
“My dear, where do you travel from, and why?”
Looked up the word “horizon” by way of reply;
Or maybe he had heard Copernicus’s “whence.”