UP! UP! and AWAY!

He goes not gently into this night
of challenge, but tacks left, tacks right,
scales the ether with all his might,
longing to escape the earth's grip
and touch the face of Mistress Moon.
The attempt, though vain (not for naught
are lunatics named for the moon),
is majestic:  UP!    UP!    and    AWAY! --
       how else can an author convey
the war-horse gallop of his flight,
the sheer colossal fury
of a godling-boy confronting
the schisms in his soul
and tearing straight up in fright?
We of this jaded era
have watched Saturn-5s lift off
and the atom bomb's furor
(on television): We scoff
at efforts to describe the trials
of one man in such terms.
But, there aren't any better.
To break the fetters of space
and time themselves he strives;
he will write Diana love letters
with his lips, will kiss her silver face --
Olympian splendor and freedom
from Duty and Life's doldrums
are surely hers to give!

Will it happen today?  If not now, when?

     UP!     UP!         and         AWAY!

               --    and then....

He can feel that fragile Bubble,
the world's crackling atmosphere,
stretch and burst and release him
like stamen spurts pollen to ease
the pistil's female hunger --
Free!  From Earth!  From Life!  From Fear!
From....Air.  The Kryptonian
cannot breathe in a vacuum --
"super-lungs" he hasn't, nor throat --
but he can resist its pressures
long enough to make swift retreat,
to slip free of the moon's orbit,
Diana's loving death-hug,
before it crushes him
and he bubbles like a slug
slithering through salt water.
Starting to gasp, his throat to grasp,
he dog-paddles with hands-and-feet
back to the Bubble, there to bounce
like a wasp-corpse on the asphalt
when a child swats it from the air.
He passes out -- Life isn't fair,
nor meant to be -- and, atmosphere
piercing, he erupts in flame and falls
near as far as those Angels fell
who strove with God's hosts in battle
and lost; as if a meteor
he were, he plummets down to dig,
unconscious, a crater as big
as the Reed Sea in the desert
cartographers call Death Valley.

So, no, not today, but --

     DOWN,
         DOWN,
             and    AWAY        he went,

young Kal-El, a.k.a., Clark Kent,
to rest in a place where none
may restfully lie; no, we must
adventure there and learn
that a Man never really dies.

           ASCENSION TRUE

    In the pit he dug with his head
    and mass, Clark sits up, heavy but
    wraith-like, not quite corporeal,
    and finds an angel and a devil
    of himself on his shoulders alight,
    wrong to the left and good to right.
    His angel says, "You should be bolder,
    not chained down by the town,
    nor the mindset of your father."
    Then it springs off him, behind
    and rightward, and grows to life size,
    revealing itself as Jor-El's ghost,
    the real one, no faker now,
    no felled demon like Rao.  It nods
    approval of the angel's speech
    and steps back to let Clark's devil,
    still perched on the boy's left shoulder,
    still in miniature, make its pitch.
    Whispering, Evil prods our hero:

    --    Nationalism is the newest sin.
          Recall, "God gives for his own sake"
          and avoid the fall you surely will take
          heeding this viper Henderson
          from far-away Washington
          with his urban innovations
          in deed and thought.
          Do instead as Eben taught.
          Seek that Isolation sweet
          that his forefathers fought for
          without ever sounding retreat.
          Do not get involved.

    And off Clark it too leaps, behind
    and leftward, this into Eben,
    overalls and all, transforming.
    The two fathers turn, face to face.
    Their son, between them (in his place),
    sits as, bare-knuckled, they grapple,
    Jor-El's white hair caking with sweat,
    Eben's weak heart feeling the strain.
    Clark covers his eyes and ears
    as the fight grinds on in that slow motion
    common to dream- (and tele-) vision.
    Then he crawls out from between them
    and tries to run, tries to climb out
    of this deepening pit, but can't.
    He can't even stand up.  He can but
    wring his hands (that's all) and watch
    his two fathers scratch and roll
    in the hot California dirt,
    and think: "The dead cannot each other hurt!  
    What can be these specters' goals?"

    Trapped between boulders now, like starfish
    when the tide goes out from their shoal,
    Clark is immobile.  But he still can catch
    the wooden rod that someone throws him
    from beyond the crater's lip.  Limply,
    like a javelin of rubber,
    he throws it, in slow-mo still.  "Pa!"
    Eben turns from his foe and lifts his arm
    in time to grip the spinning stick,
    but his blubbery fist breaks it
    with a squeeze in two, Jor-El snaps
    up the broken half and, thus armed,
    they struggle forth anew.
    His spirits sinking, Clark can view
    what he can barely hear through the thick
    slow-mo medium that muffles all sound
    but that of his own weeping:  The crack
    of staff upon staff, the snarls,
    grunts, and growls of warriors
    locked in mortal combat.
    Through tears, with one phrase fierce spat,
    and hoping neither is deaf like him,
    Clark/Kal-El curses the both of them.
    "To Hell with you!" he says,
    "To Hell with the two of you!
     To Hell with you both!"
    And he spits, sputum landing
    in their circular arena,
    the ring of never-ending strife that
    arcs its way also around and through
    the inside of his skull.  New Life.
    He must have a new life.  "To Hell
    with both your ghosts," he says again;
    and this "Nature" responds to him.
    With mucous wetted, the ground sags.
    Desert sand turns into quicksand
    and the fighters' boots mix it up,
    thick and slow, as fisticuffs land.
    The mute, uncomprehending pair
    keep on pummeling each other
    even after they start to sink,
    and neither Earth, nor the Hell
    that would swallow them, nor the soul
    of the alien watching them,
    could care.  They disappear.

    Clark heaves a sigh of relief.
    Then he finds himself freed from the rocks
    like the ship of bold Odysseus
    from between Scylla and Charybdis.
    He wants to climb out of the pit,
    but finds he's no longer in it.
    This is no Pit.  It is the foot
    of that great mountain, the root
    of Western Civilization
    itself.  Crowds sprout up all around
    him, six-hundred (or more!) thousand
    men, and untold multitude
    of women, cattle, and children.
    All stand, staring, awe-stricken
    by a pillar of white flame
    falling from Heaven to tame
    Chaos and this fallen world
    with one lick at Zion's peak,
    a loving peck on the cheek
    of gathered Israel.  Clark cuts
    a pathway through them, seeking....
    He knows not what, but instinct
    pulls him to the top to find out.

    He can't fly yet, but leaps far fast
    and reaches the summit quickly.
    The Lawgiver-to-be is there
    and he, frail, weak and slow of speech,
    is strong enough to meet the blast
    of divine fire head on
    and let it lift him off the peak.
    Clark follows him:

        UP!     UP!     and     AWAY!

    ...through an esophagus of flame and into...