Direction: Read text IV to answer questions 13 to 16.

TEXT IV

Rocket Man

My father was a rocket man

He often went to Jupiter or Mercury, to Venus or to Mars

My mother and I would watch the sky

And wonder if a falling star

5 Was a ship becoming ashes with a rocket man inside

My mother and I

Never went out

Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out

10 Or to escape the pain

We only went out when it rained

My father was a rocket man

He loved the world beyond the world, the sky beyond

15 the sky

And on my mother's face, as lonely as the world in

space

I could read the silent cry

That if my father fell into a star

20 We must not look upon that star again

Tears are often jewel-like

My mother's went unnoticed by my father, for his jewels

were the stars

25 And in my father's eyes I knew he had to find

In the sanctity of distance something brighter than a star

One day they told us the sun had flared and taken him

inside

Adapted from: ROCKET man. Interpreter: Pearls Before Swine. Songwriter: Tom Rapp. In THE USE of Ashes. Interpreter: Pearls Before Swine. Florida: Editor Ogmios, 1970. (03:06). Available on: https://www.vagalume.com.br/pearls-before-swine/rocket-man.html. Accessed on March 17th, 2025.