THE shorn moon trembling indistinct
on her path,
Frail
as a scar upon the pale blue sky,
Draws towards the downward slope; some
sorrow
hath
Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly
fares
Along her
foot-searched way without knowing why
She creeps persistent down the sky’s long
stairs.
Some say they see, though I have
never seen,
The dead
moon heaped within the new moon’s arms;
For surely the fragile, fine
young thing had been
Too heavily burdened to mount the heavens so.
But my heart stands still, as a
new, strong dread
alarms
Me; might a young girl be heaped with such
shadow
of woe?
Since Death from the mother moon has
pared us
down to the quick,
And cast us forth like shorn,
thin moons, to travel
An uncharted way among the myriad
thick
Strewn stars
of silent people, and luminous litter
Of lives which sorrows like mischievous dark
mice
chavel
To nought, diminishing each star’s
glitter,
Since Death has delivered us
utterly, naked and
white,
Since the month of childhood is over, and we
stand
alone,
Since the beloved, faded moon that set us
alight
Is delivered
from us and pays no heed though we
moan
In sorrow, since we stand in
bewilderment, strange
And fearful to sally forth down the sky’s long
range.
We may not cry to her still to
sustain us here,
We
may not hold her shadow back from the dark.
Oh, let us here forget, let us
take the sheer
Unknown that lies before us, bearing the ark
Of the covenant onwards where
she cannot go.
Let
us rise and leave her now, she will never
know.