I sit weary is the grey, shadowed corner of a monk's cell.
My ragamuffin clothes fit me well.
When I read, the neurons in my brain fire out of control.
They erupt through my conical hair: helmet for space patrol.

My body language belies my intellectual yearnings.
Literature invigorates me: I blast off without earnings.
Ideas, images prove their own reward;
rockets, like Quixote's windmills, form a vast horde

Of cosmic challengers, who meet me face to face.
There is no lonelier place to land than outer space.
All this, of course, comes from a tattered book.
Stop reading, and I can take a long look

At my isolated setting, scattered but safe.
I feel the innocence of Earth's first waif,
who leads me on through page after page.
I am a stranger still to the atomic age.