Friday, October 9, 2009

Poetry Friday: Eleanor Wilner, The North Pole, The Moon


Since I've been thinking a lot about photography lately (see yesterday's post about the death of Irving Penn) I'll just post this amazing "visual poem" - a photograph of the moon, taken at the North Pole. Like the best poetry, it's both irreducible and mysterious. As is this poem by Eleanor Wilner:

MOON GATHERING


And they will gather by the well,
its dark water a mirror to catch whatever
stars slide by in the slow precession of
the skies, the tilting dome of time,
over all, a light mist like a scrim,
and here and there some clouds
that will open at the last and let
the moon shine through; it will be
at the wheel's turning, when
three zeros stand like paw-prints
in the snow; it will be a crescent
moon, and it will shine up from
the dark water like a silver hook
without a fish--until, as we lean closer,
swimming up from the well, something
dark but glowing, animate, like live coals--
it is our own eyes staring up at us,
as the moon sets its hook;
and they, whose dim shapes are no more
than what we will become, take up
their long-handled dippers
of brass, and one by one, they catch
the moon in the cup-shaped bowls,
and they raise its floating light
to their lips, and with it, they drink back
our eyes, burning with desire to see
into the gullet of night: each one
dips and drinks, and dips, and drinks,
until there is only dark water,
until there is only the dark.

Eleanor Wilner

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The poetry Friday Round-Up is over at Anastasia Suen's Picture Book of the Day. Enjoy!

4 comments:

  1. How beautiful. Both the photograph and the poem. Thanks for posting this.

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  2. The poem is haunting. I've been watching the full moon wane this week, but now I'm thinking about how much I've missed by not being able to see it in a well...

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  3. Amazing poem. I esp love the tilting dome of time.

    And the image of us drinking the moon, drinking time, drinking life...absolutely love this one. Wow.

    Thanks, Julie. A new-to-me poet I'll have to explore further.

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  4. Thanks, Nandini, Mary Lee and Laura - it's definitely fun to discover a new poet, isn't it? Thanks for your comments.

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