“Moon’s End” by Alejandro Escudé

October 3, 2021Posted by

Alejandro Escudé

MOON’S END

Maybe the moon should go.
I’ll stay up late to see it finally,
What? Break off like a lemon
Yanked from a branch, detach
Like a plug from a plug.
Maybe it’ll just fade away,
Pretending that it was never
Dependent on anyone else’s pull.
Don’t look at me like that!
I’m no fool. I know that wishing it
Away is the same as wishing
For my own end. The tides
Rolling me out toward the dark,
A castaway from existence.
I don’t understand the mathematics
Of its retreat, how the lasers
Read its distance, catch it on
The lies the moon tells our eyes,
It’s trick of romance. No dance,
Only the threat of loneliness.
What they say is true, the historians,
Imagine all that it has witnessed
Over the eons? Caesar’s collapse,
The powdered eruption of Towers,
Pinprick messiah hung, revolutions,
And finally the glint that floated
Down to its flank, settling spider-like
On a plain. When it goes, it goes
Ever outward, toward a space
That cannot resolve itself, the end
Of a love affair, a marriage
Between the living and the dead.

—from Poets Respond
October 3, 2021

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “Would it be so bad? Watch the moon skip out of sight like a rock sailing over a lake. Imagine all the heartache we’d save ourselves. That forever tease up there, that tide tyrant, gone for good. I, for one, wouldn’t miss it. The death of the Apollo program doubts once and for all. The way it means so much and then doesn’t mean a thing. Ever noticed the moon on a desolate bright city night? It sits there, as if it were placed there by the chamber of commerce. Just another public art project. Ignored. Insignificant. Who needs the damn thing? Piece of cheese. Cheshire cat smile. Lurer of lovers. Fog ruiner. Haiku degenerate.” (web)

 

Alejandro Escudé will join us at the start of Rattlecast 112 before we move on to our main guest, Marissa Davis. Catch it live at 12pm EDT …

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