Solar System Songs - Mercury

Here is little Mercury:
dark and dusty before daylight
raging heat and fire before night.

If you want a suntan, come here:
it’s always summer when not winter
and three days lasts two years.

And what little air there is is blasted
out like a tail by that thug of a sun
behind there, next door, looming

and pulling little Mercury around
faster than any other – and hiding
itself in being so close to a giant.

Walk on the surface and you can see
dust and rock, can feel the weight
of iron beneath your feet, can be

lighter than almost air, as weight
on Mercury is a third of that on Earth.
And the creator of craters

takes advantage of this and blasts
the surface with rock after rock.
The surface is a book of the attacks

of rocks on it, of invaders from space.
Then walk, when the Sun is low
to the Rupes, the cliffs, the ridges

which tower a mile above the land.
Look out at the setting Sun, enormous.
You couldn’t block it with both hands.

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