Ghostly Collaboration in American Verse: Ron Padgett: A Man Saw a Ball of Gold

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Astronauts entering a Lunar outpost: concept art by NASA, 15 May 2006 (NASA)

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it --
It was gold.

Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Ay, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.

Moon colony: artist's concept of possible exploration programs. Just a few kilometers from the Apollo 17 Taurus Littrow landing site, a lunar mining facility harvests oxygen from the resource-rich volcanic soil of the eastern Mare Serenitatis. Here a marketing executive describes the high iron, aluminum, magnesium, and titanium content in the processed tailings, which could be used as raw material for a lunar metals production plant: image produced for NASA by Pat Rawlings, SAIC, 1995; technical concepts for NASA Exploration Office, Johnson Space Center (JSC/NASA)

Ron Padgett: A Man Saw a Ball of Gold, from Great Balls of Fire, 1969