How many drops of rain fell on the waiting, wrinkled face
of the knob? Angels came to tally, their busy whispers hushing
all lesser voices, the owners vying for an out of the way limb
or leaf or comb of grass where they might sit patiently by.

In his study, Percival made his notes, who had torn the veil
of heaven with a glass and reached within to capture Mars.
There he saw the dying of its rivers and the highways of a kind
gone to rock for lack of water in a desolate sea of stars.

As each spirit in his sector gave number to the spills,
each in secret, whispy tongue reporting to the chief of them
who made a careful strophe on hidden parchment for each count,
not one creature present challenged this was truly holy work.

Civilization must be wizened to its peril, this the man recorded. 
Thus would mankind come of age, in the stirring of the dust
of other worlds and in the comity of foreign circles.
There would we see a form of us gone beyond our limitations.

When at length the measure tipped from abundance measured full
the quantity ordained, the chief scribe raised his quill, and all
stood still. For that while labor come to term contented every form
of life and angels praised by silence the wisdom of their holy orders.

By knowledge came responsibility. It was his to tell what must be told
fearlessly. Galileo's world is round, and there is life on Mars
soon one day becoming ours with new reason. This, men of vision,
long humbled by the old, weary search for proof would learn to see.

Faithful to their hidden agenda at last the unseen hands left
that climb. In their ensuing revelry, no witness sought their course
or questioned their accounting of the rain.