Phases
Hard to say
how many moons more
will rise and fall
and grow and die
before he wanes
for good.
Through diminishing slits now
his light is reflected:
shadows seep quietly,
inexorably,
across a greying surface
where life once teemed.
Body-blows and craters;
the sun struggles,
gravity weakens;
there is no more breath,
then Apollo falls silent.
We’ll enter a dark phase,
and fuck-now, hell-now,
he’ll be the other side of now
out of sight
orbiting alone,
no man more distant from other men
than this man,
aboard his dark voyager.
Some nights I want too
to know huge forces,
wake the god of arts
and poems, reassemble
his decaying modules,
feel pressed by propellants
achieve that escape velocity and
break free to follow too
this violent trajectory,
skull-shaking
buffeted by holy deep space.
A tightened sealed capsule.
To hear Laika’s bark,
to face irradiation,
to take one giant leap,
to penetrate the sky’s blue,
to one day join the truer night,
on the further side, with him,
where Apollo now hides.
(c) Kester Brewin 2012
For N.
Too many thoughts on this day of poems.