Up, up and away: Pioneer 10 blasting off from
Cape Kennedy in 1972.
Photograph: AP

Today's announcement by the Poetry Society that it wants us to vote for the poem we'd most like to see sent into space is perfect Friday news, inviting, as it does, a leisurely trawl around the internet for half-remembered verses, and conversations with colleagues along the lines of "Ooh, d'you know that one by Auden?"

The poll was conceived by the society as part of its ongoing quest to raise the profile of contemporary poetry. "We were hoping to provoke people into thinking about the poetry that's being written today, describing life on earth as we know it," Jules Mann, the society's director, said at the launch of the campaign.

"Poets from 100 years ago may be describing human life, but not necessarily the external life, which could be very important to describe - especially if our environment is going through great degradation." To this end, they've provided a shortlist of eight modern poems to set people off in the right direction.

Unfortunately, though, it seems that the society's laudable plan to bring modern poetry to the masses will become a victim of the neatness of its own idea. Because here's the thing: whichever poem is chosen is destined to drift around the heavens for all eternity. There's a significant chance that it could end up being the final expression of the sum of our earthly culture. Is it really reasonable to expect us to confine our search for this ur-poem, the poem that may come (I apologise in advance for the portentous tone) to represent us as a species, to the field of contemporary poetry?

It's a big job for any one poem, of course, but we are nothing if not game for a challenge. So tell us: which poem would you personally like to see as humanity's epitaph? Up here, we're quite taken with Simon Singh's nomination of the opening lines of Blake's Auguries of Innocence ("To see a world in a grain of sand,/ And a heaven in a wild flower,/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/ And eternity in an hour."), while suggestions from around the desk include Germs by Walt Whitman, Shelley's Ozymandias and Lights Out, by Edward Thomas. But enough about us: what do you think?