Admiration III

        After the Moon                                                                      Marianne Boruch

     eclipsed itself, the rumor or 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.