Astronauts treaded your dusty surface
And swore the ragged rocks beneath their boots
And the grimy particles on their space suits
Were by turns gray as gunpowder and black
As the night sky quietly providing
Your backdrop, back home (as if there were
A seemingly starless ceiling for the world).
Yet the whitest hues, chalky, ghostly,
Bloodless, western pearly everlasting,
Have remained the archetype of your image,
Though credentialed scientists have proven:
Your gleaming surface is a broken mirror,
Crunched into jags and shards, morphed into hopeful
Meanings and myths of fertility.
Ilan Mochari’s poems, short stories, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Hobart, Slate, DASH, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite, 2013), earned strong reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist.
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