The Lost Temples of Xantoos

A 1930s poem of staggering ambition, "The Lost Temples of Xantoos" transports readers to the rust-red ruins of Mars, where the great temples of a vanished civilization stand as silent witnesses to glory long passed. Calhoun writes in a grand Victorian vein, his verses conjuring towering colonnades, crumbling altars, and massive idols whose eyes once watched over worshippers now turned to cosmic dust. The language carries genuine elegiac weight, this is no adventure tale but a meditation on impermanence, on worlds that rise and fall beyond the reach of human memory. What makes the poem endure is its strange familiarity. Xantoos feels less like an alien world than a mirror held up to Earth's own forgotten empires, from Babylon to Tenochtitlan. The temples become monuments to everything that passes, and Calhoun stands among them like a lone archaeologist, reverent and sad. For readers who find poetry in planetary romance, who wish Burroughs had paused to mourn his created worlds rather than conquer them.