AFTER THE MOON

AFTER THE MOON

AFTER THE MOON

eclipsed itself, the rumor of darkness
true, the whole radiant business
almost over, only a line,
an edge, like some
stray part of a machine
                                           not one of us
can figure any more:
what it thrashed or cut, what it sewed
quietly together, what it scalded
or brought back from the dead. After this,
I came inside to sleep.
                                         But it’s the moon still,
pale run of it shaping
the door closed against the half-lit hall.
The eye is its own
small flicker orbiting under the lid
a few hours.
                       Not so long,
bright rim,
giving up its genius
briefly, mountains under dark, craters
where someone, then no one
is walking.