I want to melt your layers of snow
and uncover where your flowers grow
from the wounds and scars you try to conceal
But I hope you know its okay to feel
All those raw emotions too
when you feel you can't get out of bed
in your shades of red and teary blue
Know all you feel is a part of being real
And give yourself some time to heal
m.w
Even in shadow
does nature thrive
a silent spectre
full of bristling sighs
with a glimmer
the light then shows
the blooming tree preserved
alive in its shadow
Jules Laforgue, tr. by William Jay Smith, from “Complaint on Oblivion of the Dead,”
Cherry blossoms float;
Flurries of delicate snow
in the heart of spring
It was true love felt, never true love given
I would love to see a collection of quotes about the moon/moongazing. Thanks
"We looked at the moon and the moon looked at us."
— Helen Oyeyemi, from ‘White Is for Witching’
"How bright, glaring-bright, the moon […] Shreds of cloud blowing across it like living things."
"A cold-glaring full moon suspended in the sky like the unblinking eye of God."
— Joyce Carol Oates, from ‘We Were the Mulvaneys’
"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery."
— Joseph Conrad, from 'Lord Jim'
"As the moon’s shadow passes over you—like a rush of gloom, a tornado, a cannonball, a loping god, the heeling over of a boat, a slug of anaesthetic up your arm…"
— Anne Carson, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera; from ‘Totality: The Colour of Eclipse’
"Under the shield of night, / let me unburden the moon."
— Forugh Farrokhzad, Reborn; from ‘Border Walls’, tr. Sholeh Wolpé
"The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. / Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls."
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel; from 'The Moon and the Yew Tree'
"The brimming moon looked through me and I could not move."
— Ted Hughes, Recklings; from ‘Keats’
"The full moon is out, casting her equivocal corpse-glow over all."
— Margaret Atwood, from ‘The Testaments’
"I never go walking in the moonlight, never, without being met by thoughts of my dead, without the feeling of death and of the future coming over me."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ tr. David Constantine
"And the moon is wilder every minute."
— W. B. Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer; from 'Solomon and the Witch'
"A moon loosened from a stag’s eye,"
— Theodore Roethke, Praise to the End!; from ‘Give Way, Ye Gates’
"Moon full, moon dark,"
— Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems; from ‘Goatsucker’
"Let’s order one last round and kiss in front of god and the rest of the drunks, then pour ourselves out into the night, following the moon anywhere but home."
— William Taylor Jr., from ‘Literary Sexts: Volume 2′
"In the window, the moon is hanging over the earth, / meaningless but full of messages."
— Louise Glück, A Village Life; from ‘A Village Life’
"while from the moon, my lover’s eye / chills me to death"
— Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems: Juvenilia; from ‘To a Jilted Lover’
"The moon has a strange look to-night. Has she not a strange look? She is like a mad woman, a mad woman who is seeking everywhere for lovers."
"Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman."
"Oh! How strange the moon looks. You would think it was the hand of a dead woman who is seeking to cover herself with a shroud."
— Oscar Wilde, from 'Salomé'
"The moon has nothing to be sad about, / Staring from her hood of bone. / She is used to this sort of thing. / Her blacks crackle and drag."
— Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems; from ‘Edge’
"Where, indeed does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow?"
— Charlotte Brontë, from 'Villette'
"And the tarnished sliver of moon glows / Like an old serrated knife."
— Anna Akhmatova, Seventh Book: from ‘In a Broken Mirror’, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer
"In the full moon you dream more."
— Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House; from ‘The Ottawa River By Night’
"…the moon appeared momentarily […] her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud.
— Charlotte Brontë, from ‘Jane Eyre’
"It is not so much moonless as the moon is seen nowhere / And always felt."
— Dorothea Lasky, Black Life; from ‘Poets, You Are Eager’
"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. / You leave the same impression / Of something beautiful, but annihilating."
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel; from ‘The Rival’
“I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams.”
— Virginia Woolf, from ‘The Waves’
The days are spent in glory and sun
until rain casts its violent shadow;
a storm to herald a setting moon
and bring life again, glory again --
-- it will be here soon
Historian, writer, and poet | proofreader and tarot card lover | Virgo and INTJ | dyspraxic and hypermobile | You'll find my poetry and other creative outlets stored here. Read my Substack newsletter Hidden Within These Walls. Copyright © 2016 Ruth Karan.
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