Moon Dust.
Man
on
The moon –
Your footprints
In dust
Lasted longer
Than the dust
You borrowed,
Now scattered,
Now scattered.
Stepping
Through the mirror:
Another moon,
Another
Journey.
( in memoriam, Neil Armstrong)
———
( On the day Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died I wrote a few words in remembrance. At the same time I was reminded of a poem I wrote a long time ago about three carved wooden masks of the American NorthWest Coast – Haida or Tlingit, I think. One of the Moon, one of the Sun, one that was called “Just Returned from Heaven”. Such a feeling of loss, of gain, of confusion of exaltation, of the impossibility of explaining, of the impossibility of sharing, was perfectly expressed there. The expression on the face of all those who have seen the unseen and returned…)
Returned From Heaven
I
Returned from heaven,
Face awhirl in changing jade.
Red runs under skin,
Not blood but power.
Between black brows
Is what he knows:
The wings of the hawk of heaven
And where his eyes look.
The eye on the world
Is an unseeing arc.
The keyhole eye
Knows what moves beneath.
The eye that sees
Is the eye of the hawk of heaven
Upon the broad brow.
The ears are shut in silence:
The mouth, falling slight –
Intake of northern air
Without knowing.
II
Moon is as it feels:
Cool forehead upon yellow wood –
A broad light that spreads
The red thread smile,
Looking down,
Broad with vision.
III
Sun mask:
Wild with heat,
His hair of rays and weaving.
Eyes: black-rimmed with looking fierce,
Forehead: white with knowing.
IV
Returned from heaven,
Between sun and moon,
Stripped of all.
The power runs
fast and sanguine
On the blue jade cheeks.
No guide but the broad moon,
No guardian but the sun’s sharp beak.
Knows nothing but
The wings on his brow.
Hears nothing from his shut ears.
Speaks nothing from his open mourh.
Lost in what has been –
Just returned from heaven.
——-
