|
LUNACY
1
Like
a roving planetoid that might have hit us
but
stopped in its tracks, for reasons best known
to
itself, or to weird physics, the moon
is
hanging on guard up there, as always,
doing
its rounds, a dogged observer.
We
are watchers watched. It
makes us safe,
a
paper lamp swathing country after country,
like
a quiet goddess putting her children to sleep.
2
It
must have incredibly complicated plumbing: input sensors,
software
agents directing the tap dance of zip-bright messengers,
shunting
data, threading it into wisdom of sorts:
that
rock communing with our rock and with our oceans,
cheerful
and influential, a farmyard lass
churning
a hand through our darwin interchatting,
the
organised glow of chaos, our plankton and courts;
we’d
be half in the dark without her.
3
She
must have seen the alp-man
herding
his mountain sheep up
through
passes to sweeter fields
die,
sarcophagused in ice:
virile
farmer, dark-haired, keen,
deftly
equipped, sure-footed,
a
field-hand skin-pack on his heavy shoulders,
navigator
of ridges.
After
fractured stone, loose scree, tree-line shelters,
gainly
in hailstorms and in the branding heat,
he
paused, reviving his lungs,
then
strode on by cairns, by ruts;
made
it past torrent and quag,
slipping
and rising, moving urgently on,
gulping
his food as he went,
lamed
and gouged by the tripping, until he reached
the
place he had aimed for—
but
had not, for he recognised nothing.
Snow
fell; he made a barrow;
he
tried not to sleep, but did.
4
The
moon witnesses, she records. There
is a pattern
in
the wandering, the labour and dying.
The
features of all things fade. Friendships
and tribes
disintegrate,
alter. In every moment is
movement.
Summer
and smiles have a purpose, to devour
any
energy that is around, recycled
into
ultimate and uninformative dust.
Dust
beyond dust. Dead atoms.
5
The
remnant moon, for all its care, will end
in
a non-gale of nothing, when gravity
and
one by one all the other forces cease.
Abstract
existence will lack wherewithal
and
God, exhausted shepherd, will be at peace.
As
will Leopardi, who cried:
6
‘Oh
comely moon, tonight I am reminded
That
twelve months gone I trod upon this hill
Racked
to the heart, to gaze on you again.
Above
the forest then brightly you loomed
As
you do now, so everything was clear.
But
mistily and tremulous with tears,
Which
surged into my eyes until they brimmed,
Appeared
your face, for travail without end
Was
life to me, and is, and will not change,
Oh
my beloved moon. And yet it
soothes,
Recording
thus and counting off my years
Of
lamentation. For oh how
pleasant is,
In
youthful days—when still the course of hope
Runs
far ahead and memory is brief—
The
recollection of the things that were,
Although
yet sad and still the pain endures.’
Alan
Marshfield
top
of page
note |
