There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance,
Just like the dinosaurs gave way
To mounds and mounds of ice.
Women will still be women, but
The distinction will be empty. Sex,
Having outlived every threat, will gratify
Only the mind, which is where it will exist.
For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves
Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.
The oldest among us will recognize that glow—
But the word sun will have been re-assigned
To a Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device
Found in households and nursing homes.
And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks
To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,
Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift
In the haze of space, which will be, once
And for all, scrutable and safe.
 
Copyright © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted from Life on Mars with the permission of Graywolf Press.

Poems by This Author

Duende by Tracy K. Smith
The earth is dry and they live wanting


Further Reading

Poems about the Future
"Oh could I raise the darken'd veil"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
After Us
by Nikola Madzirov
Days of Future Dwell
by Samuel Amadon
He Foretells His Passing
by F. D. Reeve
The Hammock
by Li-Young Lee
Untranslatable Song
by Claudia Reder
Poems about Gender
Blur
by Andrew Hudgins
Children in a Field
by Angela Shaw
Fast Speaking Woman [excerpt]
by Anne Waldman
I, Being born a Woman and Distressed (Sonnet XLI)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ontario
by Mark Levine
poem in praise of menstruation
by Lucille Clifton
poem to my uterus
by Lucille Clifton
Stones
by Michael Blumenthal