An Ode to Beagle 2

As I'm sure most people reading this will be aware, the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars is believed to have been located, just 5 km from its intended landing site. The Guardian has the full story but rather than repeat what many others have said I would rather present the poem I heard on the Shaun Keaveny show this morning on 6 Music.
  The poem is by Murray Lachlan Young who is a regular on Shaun's show and has some great poems and ditties on all sorts of subjects. I've transcribed the poem below (and hope this doesn't contravene any kinds of copyright or anything) so I take responsibility for any errors I've made in the words or meter of the poem. To hear the poem read by Murray himself (who has the kind of voice perfectly suited to reading poetry aloud) then go here. He has several other clips stored on the BBC site here and you can read lots more of his poetry and find more out about him here.

Murray Lachlan Young

Ah, Beagle 2, oh there you are
Sitting nice and quietly
Upon the cold red planet's skin
So British in your modesty

Your legend was receding fast
Your memory half-blown away
Just like our dreams

Twelve years ago as we assembled Christmas Day
To watch the Cool Brittania lander
Softly touch down Britain first with coloured dots to calibrate
Designed by Damian Hirst but

Christmas day it came and went, then months, then years
A decade on you sadly came to represent
Embarrassments of things gone wrong
A name upon the missing list made by those not up to the task

Dreamed up by some eccentric Brit whose reach outran his dizzy grasp
Whilst NASA champagne corks went pop you roamed with Curiosity
Your fate it seemed was destined to remain a Martian mystery

Great Britain, put aside its spacesuit
Packed its trunk and walked away until quite out of the blue
Upon one January day, a photograph of you, yes you

A tiny shiny Beagle dot, snapped from the NASA orbiter
Chillaxing on the very spot that Colin Pillinger intended all those moons ago.

So elegantly vindicating all we thought we ought to know
Yes boffin-built lightweight and groovy

Nano-budget to concur
A callsign raised and written by those lovely boys from Blur

But why we ask were you so silent?
Making things so bittersweet
Perhaps it was too beautiful for you to feel the need to speak?
But there you sit and there you are
Upon the skin of planet Mars and maybe
We may once again begin to reach out for the stars