Waltz of the 101st Lightborne

I believed they had got what they came for;
I believed our peril was done,
on the eve of the last of the Great Wars,
after three we had narrowly won.
(But the fourth,
it was carelessly done.)
I saw his ship in its whistling ascension,
as they launched from the Capitol seat–
swear I saw our mistake
when the clouds draped like a flag,
across the backs of the fleet
of the 101st Lightborne Elite.
As the day is long,
so the well runs dry,
and we came to see Time is taller
than Space is wide.
And we bade goodbye
to the Great Divide:
found unlimited simulacreage to colonise!
But there was a time we were lashed to the prow
of a ship you may board, but not steer,
before you and I ceased to mean now,
and began to mean only right here
(to mean inches and miles, but not years);
before space has a taste of its limits,
and a new sort of coordinate awoke,
making time just another poor tenant:
bearing weight, taking fire, trading smokes,
in the war between us and our ghosts.
(But I saw the Bering Strait and the Golden Gate,
in silent suspension of their golden age!
And you can barely tell, if I guard it well,
where I have been, and seen,
pristine, unfelled.)
I had a dream that I walked in the garden
of Chabot, and those telescope ruins.
It was there that I called to my true love,
who was pale as millennial moons,
Honey, where did you come by that wound?
When I wrote, he was gone and the war had begun
In eternal return and repeat
Calling: Where in the hell are the rest of your fellow 101 lightborne elite?
Stormed in the new highland light infantry
Make it stop my love
We were wrong to try
Never saw what we could
Or marvel at travelling light
Nor how the trip debrides
Like a stack of slides
All we saw was that time was taller than space was wide
That's why we got bound to a round desert island
'neath the sky where our sailors have gone
Have they drowned in those windy highlands?
Highlands away my John
Highlands away my John