Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MOONLIGHT, by JACK RUSSELL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MOONLIGHT, by                    
First Line: Sleep, all around you!
Last Line: Affected by the moon!
Subject(s): Moon; Sleep; Soul


Sleep, all around you!
Stolen away from the one you love . . .
She's asleep now too, filled with a part of you,
And she smiles in her unrecorded dreams.

But you are out now in the vastness of your surroundings;
You have come to forget her, --
For a while you do forget . . .
You are amazed

Not at first at your surroundings,
But at the appalling sight above!
It is not quite treacherous -- it is almost benign,
Yet startlingly cold, and pertinent . . .

It feels, -- it knows you through and through!
You cease to be yourself.
Not that you have forgotten,
But it has absorbed your soul . . .
Never more to behold
Never to move again
From that spot! (That's what you wish).

It lives!
At last you are submissive to a greater being;
You have never known selfishness nor conceit
Under the moon . . .

What a round radiance!
Reflected glory of the day's luminary!
Never have I seen such sallow, sordid brilliance!

Look around!
I am talking to my companionless self,
So great is my wonder and complexity.
What a strange hue the objects of the night have taken, --
I can read the palm of my hand.
The grass is myrtle blue,
But the other growth is black as black itself --
Or ultra violet.
Through the branches of the trees
Stripped almost of leaves

I see that yellow luminescence
Still trailing me, --
Frightful, yet magnetic!
Alone, appeased, calmed, unafraid,
I turn homeward . . .

Awakened to an ideal mastering earthly consciousness,
And overpowering the sense of introspection, --
Of analytic science.

But I wonder . . .
Whether I am like the tides
Affected by the moon!





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