To Ithaca

It is the Silver City. It cannot be visited.
Season of the Mists

It is the Silver City. But it is not made of silver silver would have frozen to grey ash silver would have burned to grey ash silver is too febrile an element to bear the fever of feral stars and we would never have made harbor. But it is a good name, and the men love her. Her lines stretch for a star-league From the rough trim of the plasma coils to the sharpness of the arkspires The arboretums, studded like lapidaries across the hull The star-sails folded for a hundred kilometers Catching the faint breath of light And what light— If you could step inside the conduits The prism of perspisteel would turn the water platinum You would forget everything on Earth. We will fulfill the covenant and sow the galaxy with man Until children are as many as the stars And spread beyond the nav-charts To see the edge of the real until creation is renewed. We have a vampire thirst to slake I will quench it with the next star Drink it in with the light of Ithaca.