Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, APPLES IN THE MOON, by FRANK WILMOT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

APPLES IN THE MOON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We came round by the little dark pond
Last Line: Eyes are only to weep with now.
Alternate Author Name(s): Maurice, Furnley


WE came round by the little dark pond;
Apples, bunched in the moon,
Had lifted our bodies, proud and fond
To a gentleness, coming soon.
Is it coming soon? Is it something to speak?
Something to fold our mood?
There goes a long white ray across the creek
Coiling, unsummoned, unwooed!

Something to think, lad, something to praise?
Some magnificence to do?
But it's a deep slime that is over the gaze;
Maybe their lies are true.
So moons and apples mean little to us
When all's so rotten for sure;
Teeth and bones and boys shall the harvests truss
And only filth endure.

The screaming rocs come lower than low
Shedding black blasts from steeple to station
And under the ruinous thunders timidly flow
The dark unwaking silences of desolation.
Pyres of smouldering love and law!
Plato to Christ ashes, all ashes!
And the great bloody tongue of the world's awe
Licking its bloody gashes!

Something to think, lad, to say or to do;
Their fires die down, die dark;
In the pyres of the beautiful things and true
Is there some living spark?

Only the wind is free,
A wind that spreads no dust;
Nothing but caking mud
Made from the blood
Of the poor world's agony
And the spittle of its disgust.

Wide, wide the shroud,
Way down south,
Down back,
Down Lenah Valley track
Red, red as a harlot's mouth,
Red, bunched apples are rotting against a cloud.

Coming round the small dark pond,
To a vision of apples high in the moon;
A flash of grace, one heart-beat of something fond,
An instant flash of approaching boon
Dead in its speck!
Fondness is wreck,
Boon is shame,
Pity a sunken stone
And the name
Of Beauty a blasphemy grown.
We must be blinder, lad, when apples glow,
Eyes are only to weep with now.





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