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PEASANT
MOON
What
is the moon about? It lifts aloft,
an
unmoored Everest, half-fills the sky,
deficient,
crusted, neutral eye, but fixed
upon
our desert places, ranging over
summits,
ravines and tedious plateaus.
Rock
calls to rock, creasing the space between.
It
does not call to me. But I ask nothing.
I
grovel into sleep’s lair, then crawl out,
untie
my dog, muster my sheep, move on
across
a rocky wilderness, to find
a
pass, a water hole, sufficient grass,
where
I can camp and fumble in my sack.
The
sky’s white mountain pushes overhead
and
reaches through me. I am old and broken,
barefoot
and clad in rags. And every day,
my
tent and tackle heavy on my back,
I
trudge the valley tracks, tread knife-edged stones,
wade
through peat-fens, or gnaw the blinding hail.
Rain
winds lash from the passes like a bitch.
It’s
either oven-heat or zero ice.
Both
burn my lungs. I ford bogs,
lumber on,
feet
lacerated, wryneck giving gyp.
I
have to, don’t I, till the day comes when
I
reach the dark crevasse. Let that be soon.
The
moon is not a grave, for no one’s there
asking
himself why have this loan of blood
just
to risk losing it without a warning?
Asking
how come two bellies on a bed
begat
a whelp that whines for consolation
as
the sky’s iceberg crunches nearer him.
A
head all eye, it half-fills up the sky
attempting
to outclass the pin-prick fires,
the
constellations of my ancestors.
It
is the one which would efface the many—
but
tugs along in the same silent chains
which
haul them too across the prison void.
Ignorant
and druidic face, it blesses
with
sneering patience stupid things like sheep
perhaps.
That would be fitting. They
are not
aware
of pleasure if they pasture well
or
know when they’re unhappy. Even
terror,
the
shearing shed, fox-frenzy, they forget.
They
do not know how boredom shuts the brain,
bloated
with hours but starved to fill the hours,
the
bass and undertow of troubled self.
Why
pain, why anything, but why ennui?
Why
is it difficult to face the dawn?
Why
is it hard to love or yield to love?
The
bored, lout mouths that gape like black arenas:
I’ve
seen them bawling for the ritual tongs.
The
moon with its dead whiteness does not care.
Sheep
do not care. My dog lick me
as if
my
eyes show all life is: a cot that slithers
from
crag to crag to crag to a crevasse.
Alan
Marshfield
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