Moonlight
Will we ever live on that star? — the thought
Itself has me reeling
But Moon, when you move through August's
Evening skies in enchanting silence, I salute you!
Also when you careen, like some dismasted ship,
Through heaving black breakers of cloud!
Oh to ascend, one of the lost, and slake
My thirst on your baptismal moonshine!
Stricken by blindness, your beacon is lethal
To Icarus-types, left stranded and grieving
Sterile suicide-eye-preside
Over convocations of the world-weary.
Ice-cold skull, heap ridicule on our bald
and terminally ill bureaucracies.
O pill of ultimate fatigue, infuse
Yourself into our stubborn brains.
And chlamys-clad Diana, fermenting
Love unleashes barbs from your quiver
Which infect — ah! — the wingless, the hearts of those
Who would do good on earth!
Star prone to unheard floods, I pray
That one of your chaste, and anti-febrile rays veers, tonight,
In my direction, drenches my sheets, drives
Me to wash my hands of life!
________________________
Lunar Solo, selected poems
Jules LaForgue
translated by Mark Ford
The Song Cave, 2023
