Drifting deep in space

in creaking crate,

space pioneers reflect

upon their fate.

Lurching in the black

and freezing void.

Most power gone

and solar cells destroyed.

Life giving air hissed out

through buckled hatch.

The cosmonauts cut,

hammer, wrench and patch.

Life hangs on and Mir

survives the day

A relic of rejected

soviet way.

Frail colonists await

return to earth,

and communist ideal

dies at its birth.

1997 crisis in the Mir space station.